So, my birthday on the 24th, just a week away. My only plan for the day is a nice dinner with my mother, but honestly, I think I enjoy the peace and maturity of such moments far more than I did the all-weekend-long soda-and-pizza-fueled gaming marathons with local friends of my youth; I've always been an introvert that's had trouble identifying how much direct social interaction I can handle before a hang-out is more for a friend's benefit than my own, to be honest, and I've never been able to control my own pace this well in previous decades of my life. On the other hand, it's hard to tell if I'm actually happier with age; it's getting increasingly harder to separate clinical depression from what a logical reaction to the current state of the world should be, and the things I wanted to achieve seem even further away than they were when I was merely a child. The world has changed me more than I have changed it, I believe, and yet I keep persisting; every mundane moment of tranquility, every video game, television show, or novel that immerses me in a world other than my own, every day that I get a chance to do some volunteer work and convince myself that I'm giving someone else a desperately-needed spark of hope when they need it most, all gives me the strength to keep on ageing and wanting to see how it's all going to turn out in the end. I may not be thriving, but I am existing.

I don't know how you all are feeling today, but I genuinely hope that you're still finding reasons to exist too.