I don’t. Try to avoid any mention of it as much as possible.
Not particularly. It often slips my attention until we have a cake at work.
No, I’ve more or less dreaded birthdays since my early teens.
For the past 20 years or so I’ve spent my birthday while on a road trip somewhere. Nothing like waking up in a cool place with nothing to do the whole day except whatever I feel like doing.
I avoid the celebration of it, and I don’t entirely know why.
I guess I’m just happy to have made it this far relatively unscathed and find no purpose in tempting fate by making a fuss. Not superstitious, but a big believer in irony.
My workplace knows that if they have a cake I won’t be there, so they don’t bother.
Noooooooo! Don’t make a fuss, really. Just don’t do it. I don’t need platitudes or gifts or taken out. I’m fine.
I’ve been all over the map. From mildly enjoying it as a kid, to actively avoiding even mentioning it as a young adult, to taking the day off and quietly relaxing as an older adult, but still not making a fuss over it.
The thing is my birthday is very close to and after Christmas, so even as a kid the dreaded “combined Christmas/birthday gift” and holiday burn out made it not exactly an awesome celebration. So as above - celebrated but de-emphasized, to neurotic avoidance, to quiet acceptance. The stages of life :p.
I’m so pathetic, I have the Google Assistant sing “Happy Birthday” to me. :o
I love my birthday! This year I went to Disneyland. Next year, I’m going to Disneyland, but mostly because this year some very bad news ruined my trip.
I don’t wait for anyone else to surprise me or do anything for me, I just plan something and enjoy it with whoever wants to be there. Sometimes I don’t do anything exciting or fancy, I just enjoy my day.
I celebrate my birthday.
I dreaded them as a kid because I would be given things little girls are supposed to like but I had no interest in, my brother is 2 years and 2 days older and I’d see him get all the good stuff, slot cars and bikes and skateboards and I’d get dresses and be forced to wear them while unwrapping dolls or pretty things I was quite repulsed by. Even in to adulthood my friends used to gather to watch me unwrap the parcel my mother would send and then decide who would take the gift home with them. I’m sure they were lovely things but it just told me that I wasn’t who I was supposed to be.
Nowadays my very understanding partner gives me permission to go in to our bank account and buy something I really want but would not buy on financial grounds, it is usually something geeky she doesn’t understand. I like them fine now
I don’t need anyone else to know but my best friend usually spoils me pretty rotten. No dresses. One year it was a remote controlled car. She rocks.
Late January birthday and I’ve lived in a variety of places. I’ve spent a good chunk of time living in the Midwest, so I’ve had birthdays that have been ruined by the worst weather of the year or me being sick. In high school, I always had exams on my birthday. In college, it always came after everyone had paid tuition and bought books, so everyone was broke.
At work, we get a monthly allocation to to celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, or a holiday. However, in January 2017, my manager at that time chose to use the January budget on a Trump victory party rather than a birthday lunch for me.
This year, I hit a major roadblock in my dating situation two days prior and got to spend my birthday alone.
So, I’ve tried to make the best of it, but real life hasn’t cooperated often.
It’s generally just another day for me. If someone at the sports bar wants to buy me a beer to celebrate, I won’t refuse it. Sometimes, I’ll take the day off to golf, but not always.
Anyway, the point is that to me, it’s my day, to use as I see fit. If I feel like doing something special, I will; but if I don’t, I won’t.
Fuck no, what a pain in the ass. I hate responding to all the happy birthdays and getting the damn cards that I then have ti dispose of etc. Good god its just another day, acknowledge the day for admin purposes but wtf get over it already. Fucking hate birthdays, mine yours everybody’s
Ugh. No. I hate being the center of attention and my birthday is December 23rd anyway. I normally don’t tell anyone.
No, I think it’s silly once you’re an adult. And I don’t want to have to remember anyone else’s, either.
I don’t much care about my birthday. It’s nice when people remember with a card or a FB post (yeah, I know those are prompted) but I don’t want gifts or cake or any other silliness. It’s not like I did anything to be born - I was just suddenly there!
It kinda cracks me up that my mother still sends me a $50 check - I’m 65 years old, fercryingoutloud!! And my MIL sends me $25. Those checks were greatly appreciated when I was in my 30s with a new baby, but these days, it just seems silly. Old habits die hard, I guess…
I’ll have cake and maybe takeout pizza (sometimes a friend will treat me at a sit down restaurant),
I might use it as an excuse to get something I was going to get anyway.
So I guess yes
Brian
My birthday falls around a long weekend at the beginning of August. There’s a 4/7 chance that it will be on that weekend: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or holiday Monday.
For the last 15 years or so I’ve been going to a friend’s cottage on the lake for that weekend. A bunch of us who have been friends for over 30 years are invited.
I don’t make a big deal out of it, but it’s nice to be with old friends, on a warm summer day, at a cottage on the lake on my birthday.
We didn’t celebrate birthdays when I was a kid. There maybe was a cake; I don’t really recall. But certainly no parties or anything. My parents were pragmatic. We didn’t celebrate much, come to think of it.