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It's my party and I'll retreat if I want to!


Today is my 28th birthday.  That seems both really old and really familiar, due to my habit of saying I'm older than I am for a couple of months before my birthday makes it so.  Anyway, whether I'm old, young, or a 'spring chicken', as my BF calls me when I lament our age difference every year on his birthday (he just turned 25), I'm definitely exhausted.  The past couple of months have been manic: I started a new position at work, at essentially the exact same time that book publicity began in earnest, which meant interviews and photo shoots* and writing and tweeting and generally being much more involved in the world than usual, and on top of that came personal dramas and Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping and the general year-end pressures we all face every year around this time.  
Suffice it to say, my body and my heart and especially my brain are all knackered.

So all I want for my birthday is a break, and for once in my life I'm doing my best to put myself first and do exactly what I want despite outside pressures.  To that end, I'm staying in England and spending the day with my BF (because as much as I love my family, my birthday always feels that little bit more special when I'm one person's focus instead of a reason for everybody to bicker about where / what time to have dinner as a group, and we can do that tomorrow when I get home).  One of the benefits of having a bday so close to Christmas is that I often (at least when I get UK holiday allowance) get to take the day off from work as part of my winter holidays, so I fully intend on sleeping in, then leisurely running some Christmas errands (the drawback to my bday being so close to the holiday), then having a nice dinner with the BF, who will have been at school for some of the day but has made evening plans for us.  
I'm going to try not to check my email very often, and I've banned myself from work or book stuff unless it's truly a crisis situation (to that end, I did a photo shoot last weekend on a day and a half's notice, because otherwise it would have been today).  I just want to exist apart from obligations for one day – we'll see how possible that ends up being...  Wish me luck!
*More on the photo shoots and the irony thereof in a later post


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