The holidays are around the corner…and I’m not very excited. If you could see the gray, rainy yuckness that is surrounding this city right now, you’d have an accurate visual for my general mood. I’m not even sure what the deal is—it’s not that there’s anything specifically wrong. I’ve come to know intimate hatred of my job, and that’s probably the biggest life-damper right now. Faithful readers know that I recently broke up with Boy, and though the relationship was short in tenure, it was long on promise (for me, anyway) and the fact that it didn’t work keeps sneaking up to bite me with big, sad teeth. Lastly, I went to see a specialist about my back last week—hoping to open big new doors of pain management for the condition that has caused me daily pain for the last few years—only to be told that I should really just exercise more and learn to deal with it. Um…are you kidding? The largest medical center in the world doesn’t have anything better to offer a 22-year-old in chronic pain than Celebrex and a pat on the head? Second opinion, please!

Compounding my general blah is the fact that tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. I just don’t care. I’ve always been really excited for my birthday—looked forward to it for weeks, planned special days, etc.—and this year it just seems like another day. 23 isn’t an age at which I’ll be taken any more seriously than I am at 22, so who cares? When I talked to my mom yesterday, she asked when she should call me Tuesday, and it took me more than a few beats to figure out why on Earth she’d be calling in the middle of the week!?! Finally it hit me (duh, it’s your birthday, moron).

So, I hate to venture into this thought process because it’s rather counter-feminist and that smells bad, but hear me out. I think a major source of my misanthropic tendencies this year comes from my harshly confirmed single status. Seriously, I thought about it last night, and I haven’t been really and truly single for my birthday (and my extension, Christmas/New Year’s) since my junior year of high school. I guess old habits die hard. That’s not to say that I was always in a good relationship each year (and yes, it was always a different one—never made a relationship last longer than 10 months), but there was always someone occupying my space and time. Maybe that’s what’s so depressing right now—I don’t even have any prospects. Short of my briefly-lived fantasies of Ethan Stiefel (dancer with ABT) or Noah Wyle, there’s no one on my radar right now. It’s one of the unpleasant realities of the “real world” that I’m still coming to grips with 18 months post-college. Couple a complete lack of preferred-gender interest with a completely under-stimulating and mind-numbing job…and it’s rather bleak. Please don’t get me wrong; I recognize and am immensely thankful for the outstanding lot in life I’ve been given. I have, through hard work and gratuitous luck, had and continue to have a very exceptional 22 years on this planet and that’s absolutely nothing to sneeze at. Everything just looks a little washed out right now.

I’m feeling especially guilty about leaving the cats for Christmas week. Given that all my friends will also be out of town visiting their families, I’m left with no choice but to board them. Gawd. I can’t even board them at my regular vet—I had to be referred to a “pet resort.” I’m going to pay $26 a day for them to be tucked away in private “kitty suites.” This is seriously causing me great amounts of anxiety. One the one hand we have Phoebe, who hates with a fiery passion any and all attempts by humans to take her away from her home and general sense of control. Seriously, she was named "Meanest Cat in the City” by the folks who spayed her. These are the people who spay wild animals…yeah, she’s a little on the wild side sometimes. On the other hand we have Max, whose feline herpes is greatly aggravated by stress and is prone to bouts of abject sadness when I leave him for more than 20 hours. Basically, I’m going to come home to weepy-eyed puddle of depression and one junior Satan. And I’m going to pay out the nose for it. Greaaat. I feel guilty already.