A Checklist For Your Mid-Twenties Birthday

Sep. 20, 2011

By Stephanie Georgopulos info

Steph is a former editor at Thought Catalog and a current writer at Gawker Media. Her work has been featured on ...

Read more »

  1. Feel an evasive sense of dread whenever someone asks what you’re doing for your birthday, for any of the following reasons: You don’t have plans. You hate the plans you’ve made. You honestly don’t care about your birthday. You have plans that are more or less open to the public; yet have no desire to invite the person inquiring about your plans. You have plans that are fairly exclusive and feel guilty that you cannot invite the person inquiring about your plans.
  2. Have a phone conversation with your parents in which they wax nostalgic about how quickly the past quarter century has ‘flown by.’ Feel markedly older upon hanging up the phone.
  3. Feel immense gratitude for the following people: the person who called instead of texted, the person who sent you a card in the mail instead of wrote on your wall, the person who remembered your birthday despite not having a Facebook. You’re probably related to 2/3 of these people.
  4. Remember exactly what you were doing at this time last year and feel conflicted about the progress you’ve made.
  5. Recognize the absurdity in inviting people you respect to celebrate your most hands-off, humdrum achievement: emancipating yourself from the womb by force of nature.
  6. Scrounge your money together and buy yourself something you would normally never invest in, like a $60 bar of soap. Say “Fuck it, it’s my birthday” to the person you’re shopping with, the cashier, or yourself – whoever appears the most bewildered by your actions.
  7. Drink too much and mumble, “Fuck it, it’s my birthday” when someone you care about neglects to remember your birthday.
  8. Be grateful for the people who have celebrated with you for longer than you can remember and the people who are there to celebrate with you for the first time. Thank them for coming.
  9. Realize that this is probably the third or fifth or eighth birthday in which no significant ‘milestone’ has been reached. You no longer get rewarded with societal privilege, you’re just you now, and there is nothing new and improved about it. Think this is nice.
  10. Go to bed at a decent hour. You may be young at heart, but your hangovers suggest otherwise. TC mark

You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.

image – Will Clayton

You can also read A Checklist For Your Mid-Twenties

Tagged , , , ,


View Comments

Add Yours »

Cataloged in

Text Size:

A | A | A

  • macgyver51

    11. Spend your life building relationships with people and thus spend your birthday(all of them) with people that care about you. Because its your birthday, and thats what friends do. Its a good excuse for all of you to get together at once and everyone jumps at that chance. Spend your life thinking only for yourself and you get this sad list.

    • Best Guest

      i was with you until the last sentence, birthdays carry implications other than celebrating with other people. its not selfish to acknowledge that. some people dont celebrate their birthday, that seems like the less self-involved way to handle your birthday, imo.

  • Chelsea

    12. Spend every other weekend of the year attending your friends’ birthday parties, and with every passing Saturday night, promise yourself that you will not put yourself or the people you care about through another one of these god forsaken events.

  • Anonymous

    Birthdays are indeed dreadful. I think on my 25th birthday this year I had the biggest nervous breakdown you could possibly have in 24 hours.   I should have gotten drunk like a normal person would probably do turning a quarter of a century old and also go buy something expensive/ stupid.  Like a porcelain cat or porn.  

  • Rob

    Happy birthday?

  • scin

    my birthday is tomorrow! but i’m only turning 21 because i’m not a person yet.
    p.s. yes, you are welcome for the life story.

    • http://www.facebook.com/grc15r Gregory Costa

      Enjoy your birthday!  You’re entering a scary transitional period in your life, but you’ll come out alive.  I swear.  Well, as long as you don’t drink and drive on your birthday.  Don’t do that.

  • http://www.nosexcity.com NoSexCity

    So guilty of the first one it’s not even funny.

  • http://twitter.com/layzrr Matthew

    When I turn 25 I’m going to rent the fuck out of a mid-size Sedan.

  • Kennneth

    Everyone just relax, okay? We don’t really need to start thinking like this until we’re at least thirty. 

  • Your Old Man

    Turning 26 on Saturday. Fuck.

  • Chalky Douglas

    Man, shit. My younger birthdays were pretty relaxing, but on my 25th birthday I made my mom cry in an Argentinian restaurant and then got “handsy” with my cousin’s college roommate at a nightclub called “Hole.” The next morning I woke up completely naked on a different cousin’s balcony and projectile vomited eight stories down while said cousin attempted to force feed me coconut water. I’d give anything to turn 30 and end this mess.

  • http://tysomeones.com/2012/08/15/its-my-birthday-and-ill-blog-what-i-want-to/ It’s my birthday and I’ll blog what I want to… « tysomeones

    [...] http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/a-checklist-for-your-mid-twenties-birthday/ Share this:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. [...]

blog comments powered by Disqus

Recently Cataloged