How do birthdays work and can I see a manual?

Since I have been a wee lad, I´ve been under the distinct impression birtday parties are a joyous occasion that happens without input from the birthday boy, who just lets the fun wash over him in overwhelming waves of close personal attention by his friends and family.

After all, birthdays are a thing that just happen to happen to us, n´est pas?

And as a cherry on top of my overwhelmingly unrealistic expectations, I have every year been expecting in vain some kind of BIG surprise.

That´s is the harm that happens on behalf of the American cultural influence every day across the globe. Do TV writers ever think of the consequences of their reckless money making worldplay?!?

Anyways, I´ve never been the kind of person who gets invited to parties. I get it. I am quirky, strange and volatile in unpredictable ways that do not fit into any of the societally accepted ways of being weird.

Even when I have friends that are fine or even like me, they could never be sure that some other guest of theirs doesn´t find me a little bit too much to feel comfortable (and isn´t that one of the main goals that parties tend to have?).

On top of that, I don´t usually talk to people casually without having something to do together, which complicates the ability for me to maintain my relationships on an ongoing casual level.

It took me a number of years to get self conscious of these facts and the fact, that those that wish to have birthday parties actually have to be their initiators themselves. Either they have to organize their party or get others to do it for them.

Since then, I have had plans to do one every year.

And haven´t succeeded once.

Not one time.

I have put on parties in between an have helped organize many cons and events, but doing my own birthday party? Ooof, what a pain!

First of all, who are even my friends? Would I want to invite only one friendgroup? Would I mix people who don´t know each other, having to introduce them and risking things being weird? What if I realize that people I consider close friends are actually just acquaintances? I never had enough really close friends to do a small party and on the other hand I have too many people that I would consider friends that I would like to invite.

Even when narrowing it down I´d like to party with about 15-30 people, and oh boy, does stuff actually get expensive when it comes to these kinds of numbers.

I have actually realized that often the organizer does ask the guests to cover a part of the costs, either by everybody bringing some food or by covering the costs in cold hard cash.

But, when it comes to a birthday party, making people pay for having fun for me always felt a wee bit too unnatural for me.

Then there is the venue. I have done pretty big parties in my parents house before, but, cleaning up is a pain (since the place has to become SPOTLESS both before and afterwards in order to gain my parents approval) and the abundance of religious iconography around the house is strange and upsetting to many folks in my atheist homeland, especially since they are internety nerds for the most part on top of that.

I have gone into different stages of planning with different kinds of party places before, but I usually end up not saving enough money for a deposit and also I end up thinking in too grand terms.

After all, if I am already paying for a place, I might as well go big, no?

And so, I end up wanting to do so many activities at my party to share my many passions and hobbies with my friendos, that I end up thinking up an event the size of a small convention in my head.

I hope that I will be able to make Ilucon happen someday. After all, since I have already unshackled my ego in Ego Month, I might as well do a con all about my interests?

Who knows, maybe it might even end up being on my birthday.

At that point I would know that everything is truly coming together at last.

In the meantime, I will continue to sincerely appreciate the small scale cake+gifts that my family puts together for me every year. Plus, the random scattershot smattering of birthday wishes that I receive on Facebook. Because despite finding them too cringe to use myself, I do get drops of joy out of those, even if they are usually from people that I haven´t talked to in a long time.

How do you design your own birthdays? Do you think that I have enough time to plan mine, if it comes in less than four months from now?

And would you help me with the deposit through links of the top of the page? Even a single Dogecoin helps!