Dear brain, some sleep would be nice. Love, Maddy

Some people party, some people eat – but when I celebrate my birthday, I usually just sit…and think! [soak in that oblique rhyme – you know you love it].

I often feel like Pooh – sitting in the corner of a room, tapping my hand against my head – as I contemplate various ‘things’. Things – a word which here means ‘pots, puzzles, children, chocolate, home, books, phones, words, blue Chevys, alarm clocks, pie and some glue.’ I usually feel just about as chubby as Pooh too, with various bowls of pretzels, cold cereal, oranges and even a delectable honey sandwich by my side. I’d  like to say this was special birthday behavior, but really this is what I spend most of my days doing: sitting in front of a computer, thinking about ‘things’.

Last week I thought about dead things. Morbid, I know, but the brain thinks what it wants – all I do is the writing. I wrote a lot about swimming, some trees and a fog. I think there was a bit with a man and some rain too, but sometimes it’s hard to remember what things the brain thought without looking it back up, and I’m too busy thinking up this thought to go searching for a past one just now.

Today is my last day as a teenager. That word sounds so silly and young to me, and I’ve never really felt much like a ‘teenager’ before, but I doubt most kids do. You’re always just the age you are and never more. Too old to be a child, too young to be an adult…

I certainly don’t feel like an adult: no, much more like a ‘Maddy’ than an adult. I’d say that’s probably the best word to describe me. Maddy, just Maddy – and going by anything else would simply be foolish.

I had a friend ask me what I was going to do for my birthday tomorrow. I didn’t know what to say, for I hadn’t yet thought about what I wrote just now. For the past few years January 17^th has been pretty much your basic, normal day – filled with a few extra well-wishes and smiles, and a bit more ice cream than normal yes – but normal nonetheless.

When I think of those years before, when a party was planned and presents delivered, I realized that regardless of such events I pretty much did the same things I do now.

I’ve changed very little in the past 20 years.

Sometimes I spend my birthday’s reading. Again – normal, everyday behavior, but I’d say I do it a little more so on ‘special’ days…like Tuesdays, Wednesdays and every other Friday. Sometimes an occasional Labor Day read will occur. It’s the best way to get new things in one’s head, and how will one who enjoys thinking up new thinks and writing new writes write anything at all if they do not fill their head with new things to be thought and new ideas to be wrought and new words to be brought onto paper?

They don’t.

So I read.

You can judge me (especially for those ridiculous rhymes above), you can laugh at me, you can call me a bore – I honestly don’t mind. While you’re busy making fun of me for being such a loner, sitting indoors and staring at walls – thinking up forests and paper and playgrounds and tennis courts and people and all sorts of odd things – I’ll be busy working on my future.

I’ll be busy thinking, because that’s my life occupation – thinking up words. And once I’m done, I’ll have a whole world in my hands, to mold and shape and create any way I’d like. And if I do it right, and I do it well, you’ll hear of it soon enough.

So what will I be doing tomorrow you ask?

Same thing I did the day before, and the day before, and two weeks before that:

I’ll think.