1/2-to-2/3 of the Way to Oblivion

As my 50th birthday approaches I reflect upon what I probably never will do, as well as some of the great birthdays I've had in the past.

First up, things I've started, but will never finish.  I began most of these between the late 1980s and mid 1990s, and have been working on them sporadically ever since.

• Several books and a couple of screenplays
• Encryption software for social media
• Learning Japanese
• Numerous articles for Crazy Meds (since 2004)

Things I'd like to do before I die (the ever-trite bucket list).  I'm as likely to do any of these as I am finishing any of the above projects:

• Visit the Grand Canyon, preferably off-season and after the air has been cleared by a good storm.
• While I'm in the neighborhood, see the Arizona Meteor Crater.
• Live somewhere between 53° and 60° north latitude for at least two years.  I'd also like to be at least 3,000 feet above sea level and have a clear view to the horizon facing north, east, or west.  A completely unobstructed northern view would be difficult, but east or west is certainly possible.  As it's never going to happen I may as well dream about living on a fucking Scandinavian mountain top.
• There were more, but since I read this article in The Atlantic, I'm not caring all that much about, well, anything.  I go into too much detail about it all on my Crazy Meds-based health blog.

Like Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. my birthday is just another day to me.  Unlike Christmas and some other holidays, the TV schedule is rarely different, which is the only thing that distinguishes a holiday from a non-holiday to me now.  As my birthday is during the President's Day three-day weekend more often than not (especially since so many people tend to stretch those out to anything from 3.5 to 6 days), and is less than a week after National Disappointment and Heartbreak Valentine's Day, it is easy to overlook.  Unless God/fate/karma/the universe has nothing better to do:

• I'm a true child of the Space Age, as I was born the day John Glenn made his historic space flight.  My mother isn't exaggerating all that much when she says I popped out the same time he emerged from his capsule.  As a kid I built lots of shitty model rockets.
• 1976 - The one time it snows in Stockton during the entire time I lived there is on my birthday.  When I'm sick.
• 1980 - The tradition of the birthday nervous breakdown begins.  It takes me about two years to fully recover from this one.
• Before we get married, my (now ex) wife moved in to my apartment.  At some point after that (this happened about 30 years ago) her former roommate's boyfriend moved in with the former roommate.  Said boyfriend was an abusive douchebag and I spent my birthday supervising his eviction and helping to prevent the former roommate from changing her mind.  While those activities were essentially positive, learning about what had been happening was the suckass part.
• 1986 - Second nervous breakdown begins.  It started a week or so before my birthday, but close enough.  I'm over this one in a little over a year.
• 1989 - Saw Laibach at the SF I-Beam.  They didn't get on stage until long after midnight, and were drunk as fuck when they did.  I smuggled in a tape recorder, which managed to not record anything.
• 1999 - Three days after being hit by a car, it's pretty obvious that one of the cats isn't going to recover.
• 2002 - Most recent, and worst of all birthday breakdowns.  I have yet to fully recover from this one, and I don't know if I ever will.
• I've spent a lot of birthdays in hospital waiting rooms and doctors' offices.  Sometimes driving for hours to get to specialists.  I wasn't always the patient.
• 2005 - Hunter S. Thompson dies, Robot Chicken premieres.  I have no idea how to rate this one.

 I had more, but these things just don't seem all that important now.