Life is funny. You go through life plan­ning and work­ing and meet­ing and hop­ing, and then one day you wake up and you come to find a metal­lic shade of your­self that didn't exist before. How did you get that way? What brought you there? How did you make it that far? Well, there's the con­stant cleans­ing and pol­ish­ing: the think­ing, the wait­ing, the dream­ing, the doing. And some­where among all that, there's plenty of time to won­der. You won­der if you've made the right choices — if you're going to make more bad ones. You won­der how it's going to end. You won­der if any­one will notice. You won­der what it all means.

And the answer to all of these is, of course, yes. And no. And every­thing in between. You make the best deci­sions you can at the time you have to make them, and in doing your best to keep that in per­spec­tive, you hope you haven't fucked up too bad.

No one's try­ing to kill you — well, that you know of. You pay your taxes. You're not a meth addict. No prison tats. You've got a car, a home and a cat. You've got some great peo­ple around you who, for rea­sons only gawd knows, have put up with your bull­shit more often than they've told you to go jump in a lake. Your life may be in a period of tran­si­tion, but all things con­sid­ered, you're not doing too bad.

Just a lit­tle more pol­ish and you'll be look­ing mighty sharp. Yeah, that's it. Turn­ing sil­ver isn't that easy, you know. The smudges don't go away on their own. I'm sure you will make more mis­takes, but you'll also have more suc­cesses. You're up to the chal­lenge. It won't be per­fect, but really, what is? After all, there's no manual.

Some more pol­ish and a lit­tle elbow grease, and peo­ple will say, "Damn, look at that one! It's really beam­ing!" And hope­fully, when they open the books, you'll have won more than you lost. Really, that's all you can expect. The rest is gar­nish, com­pli­men­tary to your shiny metal finish.

Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt, Jr. was born on this day in 1914 and died on 17 August, 1988 — his 74th birth­day; and though you're nowhere near there yet, there's some­thing about that sort of cycli­cal jour­ney that is just fas­ci­nat­ing. He ended up being fairly shiny in his own right. Here's hop­ing you don't let your broth­ers in time, or any­one else, down dur­ing your own jour­ney. But don't worry — I'll keep some extra pol­ish on hand.

Happy birth­day to you, Mr. Lan­phear. Shine on.