Pull my string! The birthday party's today?

I was talking to someone once (and this is a testament of my bad memory - I have no clue who it was) about why time flies as we get older. The reason time seems to fly by now that we're older is because we have more life under our belts. When you are ten years old, one year is a very long time, you've only lived for 10 years, so one year is a tenth of your entire life. The older you get, the smaller significance a year has. It goes from one tenth, to one twentieth, to one thirtieth, and so on. It makes perfect sense to me.

So it should come as no surprise that I feel like yet another birthday has come with lightening speed. Wasn't I just 19?

It seems a shame that when you are young you can't wait to grow up, and when you are grown up you wish you could be young again. Don't get me wrong, there are certain periods of life I am fine being over and done with...middle school for example. Done and done, don't remember much of it and I hope it stays that way.

I kind of miss the days of being five years old with my main concern being my sister's not wanting to play with me, but that's life. We go so long wishing to be older than we are. I didn't ask for this full time job thing, bills, and responsibility bit. I didn't ask for the stress that comes from boys, work, bills, fender benders, getting older, and major life decisions. ...I just wanted to be old enough to drive. What happened there?

However, I am happy to report that I still have no regrets. There are things in my life that make me very, very, sad when I remember them, but they are still not regretted. I can see the value in even the saddest and stupidest mistakes and for the fun ones that didn't end badly I say, "No harm, no foul, it was stupid, but it was a blast." I truly believe that even the self inflicted heartache that accompanies mistakes has taught me great lessons about myself.

The funniest thing about life is that, if you're paying attention, it teaches you how to survive the next thing coming your way. It's like when I was little and I would complain about homework or something like how difficult third grade is, and my sister would say, "You think that's hard, wait until you get to fifth grade." These things come at us little by little so we can kind of build an immunity to the bigger things coming. You wouldn't run a marathon without training right? So think of whatever you're going through as your training so that you have the endurance for race day.

And now I have completely spewed stream of consciousness...forgive me in my old age!

P.S. It's my birthday today, I'm not just randomly thinking about aging. I normally only do that on my birthday - or when I date younger men.