Issue #20: Birthdays in the age of social media
It was my birthday a few days ago, and my celebrations were understated, like most of my birthdays since I turned 27. I spend most of the day in a contemplative mood, thinking...
It was my birthday a few days ago, and my celebrations were understated, like most of my birthdays since I turned 27. I spend most of the day in a contemplative mood, thinking back on the last 365.25 days, congratulating myself on the things I achieved, and as much as I try to avoid it, brooding over my mistakes. All told, I am always full of gratitude for life, good health, and the love that constantly surrounds me, online and offline. Across Twitter, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, I received a barrage of sweet messages from friends and online acquaintances. I know people mean well, but many of the messages were terse as if sending the message was a task on the sender’s to-do list they were in a rush to finish. My phone kept buzzing with endless notifications. It felt overwhelming because I always try to reply to every tweet, direct message, and text I receive, but I quickly realised it was an impossible task. That made me a bit anxious because I know some people get offended when you don’t reply to them, but then I told myself not to worry because it is impossible to please everyone.
When I discussed that overwhelming feeling with a friend, she said people send social media birthday wishes because they love the celebrant. I concurred, but I clarified that I never consider the love I receive on social media as a real form of love. I view it as an amorphous form, here today and could be gone tomorrow. It is ever transient. It is easy to mistake it for the real thing, like the unlettered mistakes pyrite for gold. I always keep that in mind when I receive an outpouring of warm messages on social media; I never let it get to my head. It feels very nice to receive it, though.
With all that said, let me regale you with how I spent my birthday. I woke up to calls from my parents. I usually expect my dad to start hectoring me after wishing me a happy birthday, reminding me that I am not getting younger and should seriously think about getting married. I always provide canned responses - “I have heard you, dad. I will think about it”. Surprisingly, he didn’t do that this year. I suppose he is getting tired. After the call with my parents, I headed to the best café in the world, the one I always go to, the one I wrote about in my On Consistency article. There, I ordered my regular meal, and the owner gave me a nice slice of delicious coconut cake as a birthday gift. You know you are a regular when the owner of your local café remembers your birthday.
I received calls and answered as many messages as I could while sitting in the café before heading home in the afternoon. I took a nap, woke up in the evening, and then announced the alpha launch of my podcast app - Snipods. Snipods is an app I built first for myself to solve the problem I have with the current podcast apps I use. I listen to podcasts mostly when my hands are occupied - while running, while cycling, while commuting in packed tubes, so I am usually unable to take notes or take snippets of the parts of the podcasts I listen to. Occupied hands aside, the current apps I use don’t provide that snipping or note-taking functionality anyway, so in December, frustrated about a lack of solution, I decided to build my own podcast app, so it was lovely to be able to announce its launch on my birthday.
After announcing Snipods’ launch, I headed to the cinema to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, a brilliant movie I think everyone should see. I came back home after the movie, read a few pages of Tomorrow I Become A Woman1, and then went to bed. All considered, I think it was a fantastic day.
I am looking forward to the next 365.25 days.
Tomorrow I Become A Woman is Aiwanose Odafen’s debut novel. I got it as a gift from a close acquaintance I met on Twitter. The book is a compelling saga that tells stories that sadly most of us have heard of. It is the stories of women as they fight oppression from their spouses within their homes, and the weight of unfair expectations and patriarchy within society. It is a good debut novel.