~SwoleDraggo

Today is the day

the hatch day hath ariveth
happ birth to me ^.=.^

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My birthday is always a point of reflection for me. I thankfully have a family that I can always celebrate it with and it’s always nice to see the greetings pour in from friends so I’ve got those baseline reasons to feel special and actually happy when it comes around.
The day is always special to me because it’s just an empowering day to me. I tend to go through the entire year with anxiety about social interactions or things I’m interested in. I’d worry I’d come off as annoying from hyperfocused topics or needy or inferior in knowledge/skill or a lust-addled creep depending on the topic when I would try and reach out to someone, so having this period where I can see all the love pour in for reminds me “You know, I am special! I am worth it! I do deserve to be adored and pursue whatever I want!”

It’s an urge that pushed me to not-so-subtly panhandle for gift art in a previous journal that reminded people that my big day was coming up. Sure it’s still a bit begging, maybe it could have used a bit more advertising than a few days prior and some grass roots messaging by changing some of my social handles and statuses to say my birthday was coming up a week or so ago, but it’s a part of the whole feeling that I should draw attention to myself for things I’m proud of. And, I mean, it my bday, gifts are always appreciated 🥹.

As much as I’d hope for all the other grand gift art I’ve seen others get for their birthdays, I know that’s only born from them being actual close friends so they would do nice things like that for each other. I know I’m not on that many artists’ radars purely from just not being in their regular friend circles, but even the littlest doodle from an artist I admire would have made my day.
It’s also parallel to the sentiment that if I want people to know about me, I actually need to tell people what i’ve been up to and planning. Can’t have a party if you don’t actually tell people there’s a party 😅.

Same goes with the friend circle thing. People won’t know if I exist if I don’t talk to them so fuck it, yeah I should talk to people I like. I’ll get hung up on what to actually talk about with them, whether I should go with furry teasing or genuine IRL connections, and I’ll certainly feel like I’d be getting up their ass trying to regularly talk to them for the same projecting feeling I have of “how dare someone actually want to ask what i’ve been up to as a conversation starter to learn more about another person”. I should still try to poke people I find interesting. Even though a lot of the time the momentum doesn’t last because I’m just not that in their circle, most of the people I’ve talked to are always happy to chat with me, so that’s still a pretty good success rate all told which means I should just reach out to people whenever.

This is all to say thanks everyone for the attention and love. As much as I can keep headhunting for those popular artists I admire and moan when the only people that pay me attention on social sites are a regular peanut gallery, it’s still that peanut gallery that give me those dopamine hits when I see them like and comment on the occasional posts I put out.
Thank you all ^.=.^

P.S. Yes I’ll finally get to that upload dump. Kinda keep putting it off bc PostyBirb is PC only and I only really get the energy to do it when I WFH and I only really got my iPad as something to use when I’m monitoring stuff at work.