Aw, hell, I don’t feel like writing anything right now.

Today is the worst day of the year, and maybe you were aware of this. I apologize if you were. As a human being who has stretched and pulled himself in various directions in the last four damp, tasteless years, I can tell you with boner-in-my-pocket confidence that I’m not in the mood to tell anyone anything they don’t want to hear for the rest of my God-exploding days.

It is my birthday. Twenty-something years ago, a man met a woman, turned to her with lust in his eyes, and created a baby boy for reasons that he’s still trying to figure out. Or maybe he just stopped wondering decades ago, I don’t know. That seems probable.

Every year he calls me up and reminds me that I’m a year closer to death. I think he feels comfortable knowing that we’re all on this train to hell. He feels content to know that we’re all dying in centimeters every second. Our birthdays are just a nice roundabout way to measure things cleanly.

Whenever he tells me this — that I’m dying — I tell him, Father, trust me, I hadn’t forgotten.

But, really: I don’t want to write anything. Can’t I have a day off, Lord? Can’t I not think about anything for a whole twenty-four hours?

Why can’t that be my birthday present?

Maybe I’ll give that to myself, this year: a day of nothing.

Well, shucks, that’s not much a birthday present, my mom would say.

She never says “shucks,” though.

Never do I. I just thought that was sort of funny.

I think that tomorrow I’m going to wake up and do one-legged push-ups while simultaneously practicing a language (I won’t say which). I tried that earlier tonight, but it was just something sort-of educational and not the information-shoved-up-my-ass scenario that I’m aiming for. See, if I can combine packing on hot, wet muscle with [a language that I want to learn], that’s, you know, a hell of a way to manage time. I figure, if I can’t point at the clock and tell it, “No! No, God damn it! Stop it!” I may as well pack in as much life-stuff as I can. I’m stuck in this shit-ass rainstorm-even-when-it-isn’t-raining sack-of-rat-corpses of a state, and I’m in a bad way both up and down, so all I can really do is self-improvement. There are worse fates, I guess.

I’m stuck here for the next twelve months.

After that, it’s self-improvement in favorable climates.

By that time, I’ll be mourning another birthday. How old will I even be then, I don’t know. I’ve stopped counting. It’s all I can do to sleep these days — to forget how old I really am.

In reality, I haven’t been around all that long. It feels like I’ve been shuffling through a thousand long winters, but I haven’t. My perspective is all rattled around and smoky, here in Reluctant Adulthood. I’ve been pacing and dropping dishes recently. Sometimes I look around and shake my head and forget what I’m even doing in whatever room I find myself in. This isn’t a play on words, here, I’m serious: I literally find myself places, now. Just what in the hell is going on, I wonder, and suddenly I’m in the middle of a shower, or washing dishes (which I sometimes drop (which breaks my heart)), or I’m driving a car on a highway and singing songs written by dead heroes of mine. I mean, I guess they’re my heroes. Younger Ryan thought that the way they plucked a guitar string and sang spider-web-thin into a microphone warranted “hero” status, and maybe I still believe that, I don’t know.

A dear friend — a hero of mine — replied to a very long email I wrote him with a very long response. He said something wonderful that resulted in dark fireworks sparking behind my eyes. He said, more or less, that little me and little him are the heroes of our consciousnesses. He said, when he loses his way, he turns to little him. What a novel thing to do. I realized, once I’d read this, that I do that, too, only I’d never quantified it like that, which is odd, since that’s all I do. See, I don’t just keep my bookshelves disgustingly organized, I do this with thoughts, too. All the time. All the fucking time, I tell you. I never get a break! (This is why I need tomorrow off — the day of my birth. I’d like to shut down and just eat meals and bathe without any tidying and re-tidying and re-tidying of the brain.)

The closest I’ve ever gotten to admitting that I turn to my old self for guidance is wondering, constantly, “Would little me approve of bigger me?” The answer was invariably, “Fuck no, man.”

This friend of mine has spun my rocking chair around. I think that I will wonder about things related to our conversation for another two or three days, and then I’ll reply with something that maybe he’ll think about.

And it’s what I’ll do for the rest of my time here in this God-hating commonwealth.

That and one-legged push-ups on the tips of my fingers. I want to leave this place a steam-huffing psychopath, muscles on top of muscles, mind twitching with electric heat and invisible chemicals.

It won’t be so hard.

Twelve months until the next worst day of the year. I can make it that far, I wager.

Aw, shucks, I’ll sure as hell try.