yes/no birthdays.

because September is my birth month (no cookies for anyone who guesses my birthday right), i felt the painful need to write some stuff about certain kinds of birthdays. the sorts that everyone wants and the sorts that i personally do not want. yup. here we go!

1. Obligatory birthday celebrations (aka, "hello, awkward friends of friends!")

you know when you want to celebrate your birthday party and really you just wanna do it with a few really good friends but some of these close friends have friends who're in that in-between zone, where they're not exactly your acquaintances but more than just hi/bye friends and then you feel so obligated (at least i do) to invite them despite not really wanting to invite them. these obligatory birthday celebrations, i believe, are great for meeting new people since they aren't always necessarily huge parties that includes EVERYONE but just trying to include friends of friends who are joining into sort of the same circle. i myself have gained quite a few friends (albeit not close ones) through these sort of birthday parties and well, as awkward as it can be for some people sometimes, it's not too bad of an experience if you actually open up and talk to people. i kid you not. but this is the exact sort of birthday celebration i want to avoid entirely but NEVER know how to. *sobs

2. Birthday-person's-the-party-planner parties

 "I am planning my own birthday party and it's going to be Disney-themed!" 

this is again, both good and bad. good being hey, YOU decide who you want to invite because it's YOUR party(don't do it, don't let the guilt kick in and let this become item 1!). bad being, well, you're the organizer. you gotta do everything. this is the both good and bad point. because you get to choose how the party is like and how it goes and what's the food and what's the theme yet do not forget that YOU (and a few good friends, with some luck and a lifetime of effort to work those friendships) will have to do all these work. all the preparations. it's worth it if you love doing these kinda things. if not, just leave it to someone else to do it? (p/s: i still find parties like this a tinsy bit pathetic because it's literally putting a giant neon sign on your face saying "IT IS MY BIRTHDAY, YOU ARE INVITED TO BUY ME A GIFT AND COME DRESSED TO FIT WHATEVER THEME I HAVE DECIDED ON.")

3. Surprise parties have a tendency to fail miserably if not planned well.

if you want to do a surprise party for a friend you care dearly about, plan early. and when i mean early, i mean at least 2 weeks prior to the surprise party. don't do it 1 week before or 3 days before. DON'T. this is where the 'if you fail to plan, you plan to fail' quote comes in very handy. because it is dead true. 

 4. Impromptu birthday celebrations (aka "i forgot/we forgot")

somewhat similar to the obligatory birthday celebration, except this time it falls on the entire celebration itself. like if we don't celebrate someone's birthday they'll die or something. and then someone decides to whip up a slice of cake with a tiny little candle. and instagram photos as proof. voila. 

5. Birth-week/ Birth-month instead of birth-day.

when people celebrate their birthdays with different people throughout the week or the month. there's absolutely nothing wrong about this, except it can get annoying, then make people on all social media platforms realize how popular you are due to the amount of different birthday photos people see.  it's nothing wrong at all, i promise. but yes, note : it gets rather annoying. especially, especially if someone else shares the same birthday/birthweek/birthmonth as YOU but they see YOU celebrating all day everyday. that just hurts.  

i recently saw a friend post up several snippets of videos showing her friends performing songs for her as a birthday gift, and thought that idea was pretty amazing! it was about 7-8 people only, and every performance was a duo, which was really cool. that's the sort of birthday celebration you plan and think about. that's the sort of birthday celebration i would want. something well-thought out, something unique but still fairly simple to do. the typical birthday celebrations do kind of bore me now. i'd like something new. bring me to a bookstore and make the staff sing the happy birthday song for me. ask your band friends to play me songs that i really like, or ask your band friends whom i am already a fan of to play me songs. go to the orchestra/opera with me. do stuff that's new. 

that'd be nice.

but most of all, most of all, i still love receiving gifts. gifts that are made or bought with thought. if you can't find me the perfect gift or the gift you think is really meaningful, then don't give me one at all. i love the fact that people give more thought when picking out a present that is just for you. 

then again, we're celebrating too many birthdays at once now.

we forget sometimes. we get tired. we get bored. we forget.

it's a fact.

don't deny it. :p

(because i'm already tired.)