When I turned 50, I thought I couldn’t outdo myself in birthday celebration organizing. After all, that year, I threw an epic dance party for 50 of my favorite people in the world, complete with a buffet meal, a custom cake from Goldilock’s bakery, a DJ, entertainment, and a trivia contest. It was a huge success and one of the best nights of my life.
Instead of doing another blow-out event, I decided this year to do a series of smaller celebrations, spreading the festivities across an entire week. I was building upon a similar idea that I tried in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, when it was impossible to hang with more than a couple of people at a time.
It helped that I was furloughed from work the week of July 4th, so that left a lot of free time for me to fill. Still, it was quite a bit of planning to come up with a week’s worth of fun. In the end, I managed to fit in seven different events covering a range of activities that bring me joy. This was the schedule:
- Saturday June 29 A skate party at the 6th Avenue rink
- Tues July 2 A visit to the De Young museum
- Wed July 3 A hike of most of the SF Crosstown Trail
- Thurs July 4 A visit to the SFMOMA
- Fri July 5 Fun and fireworks at the Marin County Fair
- Saturday July 6 House dancing at the Elements Day Party
- Sunday July 8 Hiking the rest of of the Crosstown Trail
Along the way, I accomplished a major baking goal: making homemade kouign amann!
I’m so happy that I got to do so many cool things with so many of my favorite people. Organizing seven separate events was definitely a good bit of work, but well worth the effort.
I don’t know if I’ll have the wherewithal to do this in future years. But I’m so happy that I managed to pull this off for my 55th.
