Today is my birthday.

June 27th. I am 25 years old. I know it's a quarter of a century and that's supposed to be significant, but it's not like I've achieved anything in the past few years besides simply not dying. I've been productive, writing my music mostly, but also working on a few other creative projects. Although I'm very proud of a lot of the stuff I've been working on, I haven't really finished anything, and I have a long way to go before I am finished.

I know birthdays are supposed to be a celebration of your life, but it's difficult to care about birthdays when I put so much into not caring about age. When I think about how old I am, I start thinking about how old other people are and comparing myself to them. By the time so and so was my age, they had written and released 3 albums. That kind of thing. And of course that makes me think of all the negative points of my life. The fact that I'm a college dropout who still lives with his parents, hasn't had a girlfriend in years (and I've tried), and I haven't released any music. These comparisons aren't healthy or productive at all, and I'm not any of those people I've compared myself to, and they're not me. That's why I've decided to stop caring about how old I am and about how old other people are. It's just this made up measurement that doesn't really correlate with achievements. It only seems like it does because many people achieve many things at the same ages. They graduate from high school around the same age, and they go to college around the same age, and many of them graduate from college around the same age and get career jobs around the same age. Many of them get married and have children when they're around the same age. And many of these people only do these things because they're looking around thinking "Almost everyone my age is doing this, so I probably should too." Although those generally aren't the people I compare myself to, my point stands.

It doesn't matter how old I am now. I'll achieve something when I'm good and ready. It will take as long as it takes me to finish an album and release it, and although I'm anxious to release something, I'm generally fine with having it take a while for me to do it right.

I scanned a few baby pictures from when I turned 1 year old. I had two parties.


For one of the parties, the neighbor kids all came over. The curly-haired boy next to me is my big brother. I still talk to the two girls to the left side of the photo. They both have husbands and the one on the far left has two children of her own.


For the other party, some of my relatives visited. Between my brother and I in this photo is my cousin Amberly. She loved clowns, and she was the one to pick out the cake. It was revealed years later that I was terrified of clowns. I don't know why it was a surprise, given my facial expression in this photo and the fact that I was being held down at the table by my mother.

I think I was the most adorable baby I've seen. I've decided that if I ever got the chance to use a time machine, what I'd want to do is hang out with myself as a baby. There are plenty of fascinating people throughout history, but there's always a big possibility that if I ever got to know them I might not actually like them as people, but I can't imagine being disappointed by baby Daniel. Even if baby Daniel was boring, absolutely everything he did would be fascinating to me, because he's me, and I'm who he turned out to be.

I can't imagine any person not wanting to spend time with themselves as a baby. I think it's sad we'll never have that chance. If we have children, our children aren't us. Even if we were cloned and we had little clone baby versions of ourselves, they wouldn't be the same. Even just forgetting about the fact that they'd have different experiences than we had, they'd be physically different, including their brain and everything, which would mean they even had a different thought process, because so much of who a baby is depends on their development in the womb. Even if they start with the exact same DNA, there are so many factors that go into a child's development in the womb that there's absolutely no way they could be a perfect reproduction of us.

I had a heart defect when I was a baby, and I think it affected me significantly through the experiences I gained because of it, although I'm not sure how. It must have though. Would a clone of me even have a heart defect? It most likely wouldn't since it was a congenital disorder.

I wonder how a clone of me would turn out to be when he's 25 years old. Where would he be in his life? Would we have anything in common?