Okay, it’s my birthday. Yes, I am writing this on my birthday but will not be posting it on my blog on my birthday because, yes; I am afraid of creepos. Anyways, it is my birthday, and I wake up first thing in the morning to check my phone. Yes, I am addicted to my phone. My husband has been successful in my parking my phone in the other room—which has taken years of work on his part, but that is as far as my recovery has been.
So, I check my phone, and I find myself growing more and more irritated with birthday wishes. These aren’t the old-fashion kind of birthday wishes that a person gets from a real human being with person-directed wishes. No, these are the kind of wishes that are automated that some secretary plugged into a program to go out in an email the day of my birthday.
I have at least ten of these wishes! All I can read is “happy birthday, we want to remind you that we exist” and “we want your money.” That probably isn’t the message that they are trying to send. I think they are trying being thoughtful and making me feel like I’m important so that I’ll come back to them and give them a lot of money. They don’t want me to know the second part—this is all an effort for them to make money. But I know it is. They should know it is. We all know it is.
Then later in the day I go out to my mailbox and receive Happy Birthday cards from places I have frequented. They will give me a whole ten dollars off if I come back and give them more money. Hmm. I have a birthday, and I am getting rewarded with a little money off so I can spend a whole lot of money. These gimmicks aren’t feeling so good.
Yesterday, I went and had a therapeutic massage. From writing so much, my arms hardly work, and the lady has to spend most of the time trying to separate the muscles in my arms from being so attached to the bone. I really don’t know what that means, other than it is not good. I get lectures of trying to work on my arm, do stretches, and most importantly think about not writing so much.
Ah, all in the day of a writer. My job is to write. My massage therapist job is to keep my arms working even though they often are inflamed and threatening to stop working altogether.
At the end of the session when it comes to paying her time, she looks at me and says, “Happy birthday. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”
I smile and agree. I am pleased that she paid attention to me.
“You get a ten dollars off because it’s your birthday.”
I flush and am generally very happy about that. Other places offered me ten dollars off, and I am annoyed. She offers me ten dollars off, and I am thrilled. Why is this? To make matters worse, I had already received ten dollar off coupons in the mail for massage. I have already thrown them away and thought of those people as money mongers.
After thinking about this contradiction, I decided my current massage therapist treated me like a human. I felt seen and responded really well to that. The others I didn’t feel like a human or seen other than the possibility for those people to make more money. Anyone else have the same reactions as I had?
