It's my birthday, I'll whine if I want to

Yes, I often turn to the internet to gripe, to add to the millions of yammering whiners who take to their blogs to silently talk to themselves about things that bother them that no one else will listen too. And I've been in a gripy mood lately. It's only since moving north that I feel as profoundly the change of seasons. The very hot moves in quickly, and you forget how very cold it usually is. Then the very cold comes back, and my body goes through it's usual unpleasant paces: sudden energy slow down, sniffles, anxiety, stomach revolution, chills. To live in August in Mass is to feel in constant company with a warm, sweaty -but jolly- companion. To live here in the cold is to be persistently aware of your mortality.

Speaking of which, I am 32 years old today. These sort of occasions wear thin over the years, with annoying feeling of obligation to celebrate fighting for dominance over the more comfortable instinct to keep it quiet and personal. Why do we bother celebrating every single year? Isn't every single day just another step forward in our march to the inevitable?

Why the long face, you ask? Because I've lately been extremely aware of the fact that everything in life involves hard work. Maybe there will come a time in my life when my career is self-sustaining, my social life builds upon itself in ever-expanding circles, my wealth no longer needs increasing, and even the house cleans itself. Fat chance. From infants who must learn to self-regulate and feed to elders who must bring themselves to confront the end of life, there is never a time when we are not working for our most basic needs, not to mention our material hopes and social and professional dreams.

There is a flip side to this. If we must always work, we must always challenge ourselves, always putting ourselves in the position to grow, learn, mutate, adapt, and reinvent. None of that comes by just rolling out of bed and wondering what the day will bring.

My fear is that work is not instinctive for me. As an ENFP, I dislike routines and schedules, and am better about visualizing a big goal than setting down to do the work that would bring about that goal. I wonder why I find it so difficult to drag myself out of bed for my job, why I fear the very project that I am putting together, why I feel entitled to a circle of friends when I evidently haven't found a way to break the ice and form new bonds here. Put that in context with winter doldrums, and you've got your moody birthday girl.

I go through these cycles. I was in lonely despair in Rome when I hadn't made enough friends after 2 months. The situation fixed itself within weeks. Here in the colder new world, things move more slowly. I remember feeling this way a year or two into my life in New York, which is not known as a place to waltz into companionship. I still do my work, my many different personal and professional goals, and I believe that just by knowing what they are, I will achieve some semblance of them. I still do yearn for the stability I believe I will find a few years from now: A longterm place to live for the first time since childhood. Steady work. Family. It's the goals that keep me working, and even when I know that 'stability' exists only in myth or in memory.

So if you think life is a book, then you're on the same page as the deconstructionists. If life is nothing, you can become one with the zen Buddhists. But if you think life is work, do you go hang out with the socialists?