April 21st, 22:45.

I finish my dinner while scrolling TikTok, then get ready to watch one episode of Hacks — a show a friend recommended last week, which means I will probably watch four episodes and feel terrible about it. In just over an hour, it will officially be my birthday. I don't care about birthdays.

I used to, though. At sixteen, the idea of turning eighteen felt electric — the legal permission to get arrested, to vote (I never did), to be taken seriously at a pharmacy (still having some trouble with that). But after eighteen, nineteen was fine, and after that everything went progressively downhill. Why do we celebrate the number of times we've witnessed the Earth complete an entirely indifferent orbit around the sun? Anyway. As I said, I don't care about my birthday.

I finish what was a truly ordinary meal on a truly ordinary Tuesday after a truly ordinary week, and put some music on to wash the dishes before loading the dishwasher — a paradoxical ritual I've developed over the years of pre-washing everything to make the dishwasher's job easier, essentially doing the dishwasher's job for her. (My dishwasher is a she. We have a complicated relationship…) I've selected a Sky Ferreira album for the occasion, but halfway through the first song I stop.

I switch to something better. Not something as obvious for me as Avril Lavigne — something I could actually defend at the end of this cycle. But not that I care about my birthday. I wash the dishes and finish watching the episode. I check my phone every few minutes to see if anyone has decided to get ahead of themselves.

A few years ago, I removed my birthday from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn — all those platforms designed to help us maintain the illusion of meaningful connection. I decided that whoever was supposed to know would know. I also liked the idea that people couldn't track how old I was getting if they had no algorithmic reminder nudging them three times a year. There are no new messages. It's fine. Since I disappeared from the birthday reminder ecosystem, most people forget — and every year there's a very select few who remember, plus the occasional tangential figure who surfaces from nowhere like that five dollar bill you had and didn't even know existed.

Of my own siblings, only two remembered this year. Fortunately, I don't care.

My older brother was one of them. He's seven years older than me, and we share birthdays just one day apart — me on the 22nd, him on the 23rd. He is, objectively, the one person on earth not allowed to forget. Two years ago, I met him in Rome while he and his wife were on their honeymoon — they'd done Greece, then Italy, and my cousin and I joined them for two days. I remember arriving from Sicily, the hot August sun of the Mediterranean on my back, sweating like a horse in a very trendy outfit, dropping my bags at the hotel, and going to meet him after almost three years apart. He looked handsome as ever — we are related, after all — but threaded through his beard and hair were these sudden bursts of white. I gaspt. Our father has beautiful hair, so I'd never particularly worried about going bald. But I should have worried about going grey. There it was. Standing there looking at my brother, I felt the future tap me on the shoulder and say: hey. Just so you know. Start preparing.

He didn't seem to care at all.

00:00.

This is it. Happy birthday, Micael. Or, in your particular case: Just birthday.

I push the image of my brother's beard out of my mind — after making a mental note to look into vitamins, because apparently that's where we are now — and try to remember what I thought twenty-seven would feel like when I was fourteen, fifteen. Twenty-seven always sounded like a genuinely sexy age to me. So much sexier than twenty-six, which is frankly a filler year, and we all know it. Twenty-five at least has the decency to come with a crisis — I marked mine by going on a Swedish spiritual retreat and spending a week without my phone, which I then documented extensively on Instagram for the following three months. A very fitting twenty-five. Twenty-six I threw a party a full month after my actual birthday because two Brazilian friends happened to be in Milan, and while I loved having them there — I am at least contractually obligated to say so — it mostly felt like an excuse to get drunk and go to a club. Twenty-six is a meh age. But twenty-seven? Twenty-seven is the age of hot people. The age at which all the most interesting musicians die. That's the energy I'm working with now. Or would be, if I cared about birthdays.

00:09.

The first message arrives. Not from who I expected — but from a friend I've lost touch with and miss more than I usually admit. Of all people, he remembered. Then at 00:23, someone else. A fairly recent, fairly special person. I was half-expecting it, but it landed warmly regardless. And then they started coming — each notification a small, involuntary reminder: oh, I am actually loved. It is nice to feel loved, no matter the age. Oh, this one wrote more than I expected. Oh, that one was funny.

I may not care about birthdays. But it is impossible not to care about birthday messages. And I haven't even mentioned the gifts. I love gifts. In case you were wondering.

Around 01:00.

I get ready for bed and attempt a moment of reflection. Isn't this when it's supposed to happen? The quiet reckoning, the meaningful audit of the year? I don't feel particularly changed. Maybe the sexiness of twenty-seven will arrive gradually — though it will presumably arrive alongside the white hairs. A little wisdom, please, yes, with a side of wrinkles, thank you. And a portion of crow's feet. Don't forget the extra helping of that creeping, ambient weight of expectations I carry with me everywhere, regardless of the destination.

It is, at this point, impossible to deny: Micael, you care about birthdays. Go to sleep.

By the way: brother called near the end of the day — 23:40, give or take. But he called, and he remembered. We talked about life, investments, the World Cup. Who do you think will win? "Maybe France. Spain is good. Portugal too," he said, in the tone of someone vaguely recalling the different teams. "Oh, I see," I said, clearly not seeing it… I've put some money on those though, so let's hope. Maybe I'll start understanding soccer properly when I turn twenty-eight.

Something to look forward to.

With love,

Micael.