People kept asking me what I was planning on doing for my 40th birthday. Birthdays have never been that big of a deal to me. When you’re born around Christmas, your birthday just sort of gets folded into the rest of the holidays. Fine with me. I’m not someone who has to have any big celebration - it’s just another day, right?

But I seemed to owe myself some kind of recognition for staying alive for 40 years. I went through a few scenarios in my head but came up with nothing. I’m not good at planning my own parties. Then it popped into my head: why not put on a show and invite all of my friends?

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A few months ago, I met with someone about a project I was pitching. This person was highly creative and doing work that I wanted to help support. The meeting went well and we parted ways. Later that day, a Facebook post popped up from this person where they said how great they felt that someone was taking an interest in their work. My first thought was: That sounds like a good person. My second thought was: Wait, I think they’re talking about me!

This is often my reaction if someone says anything positive about me. It literally feels like they are talking about another person. It was difficult to articulate until I came across the concept of Imposter Syndrome.

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Last week, I was at an event and waited in line at the open bar. Since it was an open bar, the lines were long. As we inched closer to the bartenders, I spotted them, right away. Two people, a couple. I’m assuming they were a couple because they wore matching black hats. They walked slowly between the line and the bar, moving their way up. When they reached where we were standing, they slid into the line right in front of us.

The three other people I was with stopped talking and turned to them. The people with the matching hats simply looked at each other and with an eye roll, silently said, What’s their problem?

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A few weeks ago, I went to see David Sedaris in person. If you don’t know who that is, I can’t help you. He was coming to Toronto to perform and I was having a difficult time deciding if I should go or not. In the end, the show was right after a big event I was organizing and felt compelled to treat myself.

Sedaris is one of my heroes. Essentially, for better or for worse, depending on your opinion of my work, he is one of the reasons that I do what I do. If you saw me perform at a storytelling event, you’d know what I mean. I adopted and made my own, a similar style of his. Basically, a persona that says, “Why are you laughing, I am trying to be serious here.”

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