Stuff I('d) Like (to gift myself) - Birthday Edition

the best gifts are the ones you give...yourself.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve co opted the entire month of February as my birth month and today just happens to be my actual birth day. I joked about writing a ‘Stuff I Like’ post this month about what to get runners for their birthdays, and after ruminating a bit I actually think the best birthday gifts are the ones you buy yourself. Birthdays are the best excuse to overindulge, partaking in a few ‘treat yourself’ moments that you might otherwise deem too frivolous or too indulgent for a random Saturday in the dead of winter. But a birthday Saturday? I say go for it!

I’ll admit this past week I’ve been feeling a little less merry and more ‘meh’ about it all. I’ve been trying to decipher if these overall feelings of ennui are actually due to getting a year older or something else and I think they’re related more to a recent adjustment in my schedule. At the beginning of the year I was juggling my first freelance project while also working on IRL Wylder goals and I had gotten a taste of what it felt like to be busy again, to be working against deadlines inspired by the content I was creating. Now that my freelance project is over and we’ve submitted the LOI (and are still waiting for a response from the landlord), I once again find myself with an abundance of free time and once again need to reexamine my relationship with busyness and self worth. Another post for another time however because today is all about my birthday!

Since turning 40, every birthday that’s come after I’ve felt more and more like I’m settling into this time period called ‘middle age’ and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. These words shouldn’t be triggering as they merely identify that I am, in fact, in the middle of my life (hopefully on the earlier side of middle!) but society has done very little to make middle age feel sexy. So if I’m honest there’s a small part of me that feels *gasp* old. I’ve written about it before and the feelings are all still there and I’m working through it. My issues with age have less to do with my face getting wrinkles and more to do with my body just, well, aging. My knees hurt sometimes and my ankles are stiff when I get out of bed. So while I’m not going to cry ‘I’m so OLD!’ into my 42nd birthday cake, I’m just saying if you don’t remember the world possibly ending on December 31, 1999 enjoy the fact that you can roll out of bed in the morning fresh as a daisy after a 9 mile run the day before.

Now that I’m in my older and wiser years, when I overindulge in birthdays it’s at a spa featuring a menu of delicious things like hot stone massages and heated pools I can luxuriate the day away in. So this is a list of all the bougie things I’d like to gift myself as I celebrate the completion of one cycle around the sun and prepare for another. Things that will leave me feeling refreshed, relaxed, revitalized and all the other ‘R’ words one might want to feel after a day (or two or five) of self-indulgent self care.

1. A Trip To Hawaii

   Because my birthday falls in the dead of winter and my awkward run-induced tan lines are all but a distant memory, might I suggest pulling the ‘it’s my bday and I deserve it’ card and booking oneself a trip to a warm, sunny tropical destination? Hawaii too much of a reach? How about Palm Springs? The goal here would be guaranteed access to sun, so no to Southern California but maybe yes to Mexico? Nothing makes me happier than running in very little clothing, sweat pouring off of me as if I had just emerged from a sauna. My apologies to the barista who has to make my post-run matcha latte as I stand in a pool of my own sweat but hopefully it makes it a little less gross knowing just how incredibly happy I am.

   

   starting it off with the highest of high roller options

2. A Run-Focused Staycation

   Boarding a plane and heading someplace warm and sunny (regardless of whether it involves crossing land or sea) might not be a realistic option no matter how desperate the ‘it’s my birthday!’ cry might be. So instead, might I suggest a staycation someplace local(ish) at a fancy hotel with a fancy spa near some lovely running routes? This year, my husband surprised me with a 3 day trip (sans toddler) to one of our favorite hotels in one of our favorite wine country towns. There are running routes galore but I’ll probably choose hiking over running since it’ll be something we can do together and I’m not mad about it. While it might not be a gift I got for myself, I will 100% be gifting myself an 11am massage while we’re there just because I can.

   

   i plan on doing a lot of sleeping and a lot of spa-ing and if i run that’ll be great too.

3. Fresh Ink

   What better way to capture the crisis of midlife than with a new tattoo? I’m joking about midlife being a crisis of course but not about the tattoo! Throughout my 20s I accumulated many a permanent marking around my birthday as I would repurpose all monetary gifts I had received toward adorning my arms and legs with whatever burning desire I had at the time. Some great, some random, but I love them all! I’ve revived the tradition this year and added a croissant to my forearm in honor of our little croissant king. I have a couple more in mind and it looks like I might be going back sooner than my 43rd year.

the tiniest little croissant there was. i showed it to dougie when he got home from daycare and he proceeded to tell me he wanted to eat it so i’m going to assume he likes it.

4. A Health Focused Splurge

   General and vague I know but really this is something health focused outside the realm of an annual wellness check up or mammogram (if you haven’t had either of these and you too qualify for ‘elder millennial’ status consider this a reminder to book now!) As I get older I’m less concerned about ‘turning back the clock’ and more focused on how to keep the clock running optimally for as long as possible. I could care less about injecting fillers into my face but what I would like to know is are my hormone levels ok? Is there some underlying something that can explain why I’m so incredibly tired all the time? Or is it just a side effect of toddlerhood no one warned me about?

   I received a targeted ad for a company called Modern Age, which promises to ‘extend your healthspan by preventing age-related decline through a holistic and personalized approach to medicine.’ Sounds interesting, and clearly Instagram has all my data because this is exactly something I’d be into. At $500 for an ‘aging wellness assessment’ it’s not something I’d casually opt into but perhaps as I turn over another year I might be so inclined?

   More likely, I might use this as an opportunity to treat myself to an infrared sauna and a massage at Worthy, a self-care studio in the East Bay I’ve been wanting to visit. Would I willingly cross the bridge on a regular basis for this? Definitely not. However I’m so starved for warm weather and a massage I would do it once as a treat for my birthday. One of the few benefits of being unemployed freelance is I can do this at 11am on a Tuesday so traffic be damned!

   

   on the left an ad for modern age - i’ve never felt more targeted and yet please take all my money. on the right future me enjoying an infrared sauna.

5. A Run Focused Splurge

   Because I’m here for a good time and a long time, what better time to splurge on a run coach than when I’m entering into my master’s era? Training shifts as we age and I’ve never really felt the need for a coach, but perhaps now might be a great time to enlist one? I’ve signed up for my first race since 2019 and maybe a coach could help me train a little smarter this time around. I’m not trying to break any records but it might be nice to pay someone to give me a personalized training plan so I don’t have to think about it.

   I’ve also started to question my nutritional choices (or lack thereof) as of late and whether they might be working against me so enlisting a running nutritionist has been top of mind. I would say I generally err on the side of healthy but my plate is definitely lacking some color and for the sake of this conversation I really hope avocados are classified as vegetables. I also may or may not be eating enough and I would love someone to just tell me what to eat and when as I don’t really enjoy feeding myself.

   Even better than a nutritionist? Prepared meals delivered to my door. I started ordering Methodology meals for lunch around my sixth month of pregnancy when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and it was too exhausting to try and figure out what foods I could eat that wouldn’t spike my blood sugar. I resumed them postpartum and it was one of the few times in my life when I didn’t begrudgingly gaze into the refrigerator at lunch. At about $200 a week it wasn’t sustainable, especially while bleeding money with an infant in full time daycare in a city that ranks #1 on the list of most expensive cities in the US to raise a child. But maybe as a treat for my birthday month?

   

   a photoshop re-enactment of future me enjoying all my prepared meals. anyone know anyone at methodology who wants to sponsor me?

6. New Shoes

   As great as it is to always treat ourselves to new running shoes, maybe this time around since it’s a special occasion the new shoe treat could be of the non-running varietal? My footwear assortment is aces for warmer weather but in the cold, rainy bowels of winter, not so great. I have a few pairs of nicer boots but I’ve come to realize I’m not really a boot person and I much prefer the casual ease of things that can be slipped on. Boat shoes, loafers, ballet flats…sneakers I never have to untie. Ease of a slip on also translates to ease of outfitting. If I have pants that work with sandals there’s a very likely chance they’ll also work with a pair of flats as well. Now this isn’t to say that if I hadn’t just purchased a new pair of running shoes last month I wouldn’t be eyeing up something fancy, but after two weeks of rain I’ve come to realize that maybe my non-active footwear could use a little love as well. So in the spirit of indulgent, treat yourself purchases a new pair of pretty non-running shoes might be at the top of the list this year!

   

   ballet flats are top of mind because they’re the next best thing to sandals in the winter. L to R : love these from freda salvador and would actually consider purchasing in color as red can totally be a neutral, right? they also come in green so hard decisions might need to be had. a more literal interpretation from aeyde, a mesh pair from loeffler randall (we aren’t over mesh shoes yet are we?) and a ultra soft pair of leather loafers from everlane that look like to be heavily inspired by these toteme ones.

7. A no-questions-asked-leave-the-house-when-I-want-to Run

   This one’s completely free and can feel like an absolute luxury when you’re used to your schedule being dictated by the 2 year old czar that lives rent free in your house. When he’s not at daycare, my running schedule usually involves pushing the cute little dictator in his chariot for 5 miles or running a slightly longer run during nap time while my husband is at home on the weekends. Oh the luxury of just leaving for a 9 mile run at 10:30am with no questions asked! Just a see ya and a hug and a hop, skip and a jump out the door!

   

   scenes from my 9 miler the other week when it randomly happened to be 70 and sunny and i left the house before dougie’s nap time. it felt luxurious.

8. Fancy Pants Flowers

   I feel like buying the birthday person in your life flowers for their big day is bare minimum but nothing feels more indulgent than picking up a fresh bouquet for yourself. Skip the seasonals at Trader Joe’s; I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill Sunday morning flowers here. Go to the nicest, bougiest florist in town and treat yourself to a bouquet with a price tag that makes you wonder if the flowers were flown in fresh this morning from Argentina. It’s your birthday goddamnit and you deserve it.

take some advice from our girl miley and buy yourself flowers.

So happy birthday to me and happy new moon to everyone! It’s a particularly powerful one this month so relish in it and feel free to use that as an excuse to treat yourself to something fabulous.

*k