They say it's your birthday!

"They say it's your birthday - it's my birthday too, yeah..."

Aah - the classics...

So celebrating my birthday today, I'm enjoying the loving outreach from so many friends, near and far. As I look to each message, I'm visualizing the connection to every person who sends: from my very longest-time friend and our childhood schoolmates to those from camp, high school, youth group, the college years, professional colleagues, various neighbors, musician friends, co-teachers, fellow activists and even a few I've only met in recent days...It's exciting to see the spectrum of my life captured in such a relatively brief span of time - first birthday wish actually arrived the other night (nearly two days early) and will likely continue over the several hours ahead. It's also fascinating to see how many of these seemingly disparate individuals overlap in the many areas of my life...(I am thankful to David Hachen for initially turning me onto the formal study of network theory).

Through the earlier part of the day, I was trying to come up with something witty, profound or even meaningful to write to capture my thoughts and feelings on this occasion. Yet I've been writing less these days, and couldn't find a prompt for my ideas. And it struck me - after some 45 years of writing - that expressing ourselves in words is much like playing music: no matter how long we've done it, how successful we've been at it, how much we might be gifted to do so - it requires continued, ongoing practice and repetition - not just to get "better" at it, yet even to maintain the ability we cultivate. Though somewhat like riding a bike (which supposedly you can't forget how), it takes discipline and dedication to articulate ourselves well.

So I guess that's my birthday gift to myself - rediscovering my enjoyment of writing, and rekindling my desire to do so. And now that I'm finally recuperating from a recent significant injury to my left index finger ("frankenfinger") I can get back to seriously playing the guitar, typing my heart out, and finding my voice. In favorite words from my favorite writer:

You can walk, you can talk, you can fight

But inside you've got something to write

In your hand you hold your only friend

Never spend your guitar or your pen