Warning: Melancholy Birthday Post Ahead

So today is my birthday. 29 years of not dying, but not exactly living either. Oh sure, I've had fun... I've partied quite hardy, I've loved and been loved back, I've lived in some of the most exciting cities the United States has to offer, I've been to a few foreign lands where, at one point, I'm pretty sure I ate part of a horse... but... the thing is... I don't feel like I've DONE anything.

I feel like, in general, my 20's have been a waste. Of money, of talent, of brain cells, of a liver that will be able to function properly well into my golden years, etc. It's just all slipped through my fingers like so many Skittles when you're trying to eat Skittles after a hard night's drinking and your hands are shaking so bad it's like they invented earthquakes. You can't hold on to those multi-colored bastards when your hands are shaking like that! But they're so delicious and after most of a bottle of cheap tequila, nothing sounds better than a sweet rainbow of flavor punching you in the mouth... oh man... I would slit a blind man's throat for some Skittles right now...

Anyway, I feel like shit is slip-slidin' away, to paraphrase Paul Simon, and with this... my 29th year on Earth... it is time to throw on the motherfucking breaks. Or at least get some shit accomplished, because I'm pretty sure you can't technically stop yourself from aging. Not without a lot of plastic surgery and that shit can get expensive. Plus I don't want to look like a happy burn victim or like I'm always dressed up as Katherine Helmond from Brazil.

So here's the list I've been working on... shit I want to do and see and accomplish before I turn 30 and burst into flames like vampires do.

My 20's Are Almost Over - A Bucket List

NOTE: Sorry for using the lame pop culture-y phrase "bucket list." I know it's weak sauce, but it's an easily recognizable shorthand for what I'm talking about, even if it DOES make us all think of supposedly wacky Jack Nicholson vehicles.

-I want to get out of Arlington, TX for at least a week and just hit the road. I want to end up in some small town on the border and meet a half-Mexican girl who works in a bar and is in trouble with the law. I want to buy here a couple of drinks. Then I want to beg her to take me to her grandmother's house where her grandmother will then make me real tacos, like from the old country. Old Mexican ladies make the BEST tacos.

-Maybe I could stop being such a fat ass this year. I mean, it's not super likely that it's going to happen... it's hard to get motivated to work out when you have nothing in your life but school and work and the unending void of loneliness that fills up most of your garage apartment, but... you know... it could happen. I could do a push-up every now and then.

-I'd like to start a writing project (that isn't a blog post!) and actually finish it. I have so many ideas cage-fighting in my brain right now... a few of them actually decent... it seems a shame that at least one of them hasn't been let out into the cold light of day. I don't expect to get famous or anything... this is just for myself, to show me that I can finish something creative.

-Oh who am I kidding, I'd like to get really, really famous from my writing. Or not from my writing... if I can grab a few minutes of precious, precious fame by getting punched in the nuts by an old grandma on YouTube, well then, so be it. My ego looks like a shriveled jack-o-lantern left on the porch of some guy's house after he died in a tragic Halloween-related stabbing. It needs some fluffin' and pumpin'.

-I'd like to be smooth with the ladies, even if it's only for like five minutes. I think I could get a lot of traction in five minutes. Of course, after the five minutes I'd go back to trying to impress them with my magic trick, or by making sarcastic comments about the spinach dip, or by clamming up and getting all scowly after five drinks so they think I'm half a tard. But for those five minutes... man... I would be smoother than a black guy!

-It would be really cool to ride in a helicopter. This isn't a life-changing event or anything, but I still think it would be neat. ZOOOM!!! Is what I would say if they let me ride in a helicopter. Oh, and I should preface this by saying that I *do not* want said helicopter to be a CareFlight air-lifting me to a hospital after a terrible car accident. I mean a fun helicopter ride where you get to sing songs with the pilot and then land on the roof of a Jack in the Box and go down a ladder to a room where they serve you tacos.

-Maybe laying off the tacos in general wouldn't be so bad and idea. I'm always so greasy...

-I guess really I just want to find my happy. Whatever that happy happens to be. If anyone knows where happiness hangs out, please feel free to let me know. Oh, and it's not at the bottom of a bottle, or embedded in the code of streaming internet porn. I've checked those places and have come up empty every time.