Iz mah burfday.

It's my birthday today, so it's time for one of those nostalgic, "holy hell I'm getting old" blog posts.

So I'm now 28. 10 years since I became a legal adult. 7 years since I could drink myself stupid (legally, anyway). 12 years since I could drive a car.

I feel like I should have done more by now. Now, don't get me wrong; I've always been the type to take life by the horns and do as much as I can. I only get one go-round, I plan to milk it for all it's worth. I've done a lot, seen a lot, experienced a lot...but I still feel like I've been sitting on my ass, waiting for my life to happen. Funny thing about life, it tends to pass you by when you do that.

When I turned 18, I felt like I had all the time in the world. I'd had a run-in with my own mortality a few years earlier, and knew I wasn't immortal, but still had this feeling like it would take as long to get from 18 to 28 as it did 8 to 18. Strangely enough, it goes a lot faster. That makes me wonder about the next decade. Something tells me I'm going to wake up in a week or two and I'll be 38, wondering WTF happened.

In other words, time is flying, and I didn't realize how quickly until now. So...time to whip out the ol' bucket list and decide what I'm going to do. More than that, it's time to actually start crossing things off.

In the next couple of months, I intend to finish, once and for all, "Sins of the Father". I have the manuscript printed and have already started editing. I suspect, even with NaNo going on through November, I should have it spit-polished and submission-worthy by sometime in January. As for NaNo, I think I have a viable idea for my project, so at the end of November, I'll see if I've got something decent going on. With any luck, it too will be submission-worthy in early 2009. I also plan to make some serious headway on "Fit for a King". Ideally, this time next year, I'd like to at the very least have a first draft completed.

I have a few other projects I'm going to keep working on, because I have far too many "one day" writing projects (as in, "one day, I'll finish them"). There's no time like the present. It's very easy to come up with an idea, jot down some notes, and plan to "get to it", but it's a very different thing to actually park my ass in a chair and do some writing. "I'm going to write" and "I'm writing" are what separates wannabes from writers. I've been a wannabe for too many years, and it's time to actually be a writer.

I've already made steps towards going back to college next spring, and will hopefully have my degree in 2011. I got my Associate's early (graduated high school with it), then fell into that "I have time, I can take a break" rut. 9 years later, I still haven't gone back. But I am going back, and I will finish it.

I also have some dreams of traveling, which will be achieved depending on time, money, and how much it costs to travel in the next few years. There are a few places in the world I intend to see before I die, and I'm going to be more than a little annoyed if I see 38 before I see Angkor Wat, Komodo, or Australia.

I want to learn to scuba dive. I want to go skydiving again. I want to get kicked out of a strip club in Guam again.

Basically, life is short, and I don't wish to -- to paraphrase "The Matrix" and Ms Papercuts -- sleepwalk through it. I have a lot of things I want to do, and I've spent a lot more time wanting to do them than actually doing them.

With any luck, on my 29th birthday, I will be a bit more "woohoo! Bring it on, 30!" than "shit, I haven't done a damn thing". With even more luck, I won't be blogging on my 38th birthday about "holy shit...where did ten years go? Who am I ? Where am I? WTF???"

My birthday present to myself: 365 days of doing all the things I've been meaning to do. Hooray.