Message twenty-nine of thirty, but with effort behind it

Congratulations On Ageing

You will receive roughly thirty identical messages today, all of which you will have forgotten by Thursday. This one contains a formal complaint about January, which you still will not let anybody be angry about on your behalf.

Time served, in full

heartbeats, roughly

Every second, including the six weeks in January you would like struck from the record.

Candles. Off you go. I am not skipping this.

Tap each one. Yes, all of them. You have spent a year being efficient. You can afford to be slow about this.

Tap each one out

Annual review, conducted without your consent

The year in three incidents, none of which you marked.

January was the restructure, a boiler that gave up on the fourth, and the 6.40 train, because obviously the car chose that month to die as well. Six weeks. You went every day of it, on time, and told approximately nobody. I only know because I was the one standing next to the boiler.

In May you stood in front of two hundred people in Leeds and never once glanced at the cards you had spent six weeks writing. You were back on email by four o’clock. Four o’clock.

In August you had four days with no plan, no alarm and entirely the wrong shoes on a beach, and you looked better than you had all year.

No party for any of it. An administrative failure on a fairly grand scale. Consider this the correction, filed eight months late.

Formal requests, filed with the universe

Six demands lodged against next year on your behalf.

01No January. And if there is one, no 6.40 train and no telling nobody until the boiler has been dead a fortnight.

02Something as good as Leeds, and a full week of enjoying it before you are allowed anywhere near your inbox.

03More than four days. No plan, no alarm, and the same wrong shoes.

04The thing you have had a tab open for since February, booked by you, without first checking whether it is sensible.

05Fewer emails sent after eleven at night. Nothing good has ever come out of one of those.

06And whatever you actually want, which you are famously bad at saying out loud, even when asked directly.

Selected incidents: one low, three high

January
The month nothing worked
The restructure, the boiler on the fourth, and the 6.40 train every morning because the car was off the road. Six weeks. You went every day and told almost nobody it was happening. You waited for the plumber in a coat over your dressing gown and ran an entire meeting from the kitchen.
May
Leeds
Two hundred people, six weeks of cards, and you did not look at them once. Then you were back on email by four the same afternoon, already worrying about the next one. I have never seen anyone put something down that fast.
August
Four days, no plan
You slept until ten twice. You wore entirely the wrong shoes on the beach and did not care. You did not open your email for four days, which I have decided was the actual achievement of the year.
A Tuesday in October
Nothing at all
You fell asleep on the sofa at nine with the television still going. Nothing happened, nothing needed doing, and you were happy. I noticed and said nothing at the time, so I am saying it here.

Twelve months of evidence, some of it in the wrong shoes

January made the cut, and so did the wrong shoes on the beach. This is the year you had, not the edit of it.

An unsolicited character assessment, filed in May.

Everyone tells you that you are kind. True. Boring. Next.

The genuinely interesting thing is January. Nothing worked, you went anyway, and you got through six weeks of it without once making it anybody else’s morning. Things do not collapse while you are holding them, which looks effortless from outside and is nothing of the sort. You have been quietly absorbing that cost for years and have never invoiced a single person for it.

And then in May, when something finally went right, you allowed yourself until four o’clock. Four hours. This year I am formally disputing that.

Four cards. Turn them over. No, you cannot skip to the end.

Front: what somebody would put in a card. Back: what I would only say once you had left the room, and what January actually looked like.

The one you overplayed in August

The one you played eleven times on the way there

Eleven plays in four days. By the ninth I had stopped complaining and by the eleventh I was singing it, which I have denied until this moment.

Rations for the other 364 days

Today expires in about twelve hours. These do not.

Everything on this page is still true on a Monday, including the part about January. The boiler was fixed on the eleventh. You worked the whole seven days it was out and mentioned it to nobody.

Tell me in week one, not week six. I only found out about January because I happened to be standing next to the boiler. I would like to be told next time, and I promise not to make it a big thing when you do.

Leeds. Two hundred people, six weeks of cards you never looked at, and you were back on email by four. Sit in the next one. Give it a week. Whatever is after it will still be there afterwards.

Things do not fall over when you are holding them. Nobody says this to you because from the outside it looks like nothing at all. I have watched it from about a foot away. It is not nothing.

Be unimpressive for an evening. No alarm, wrong shoes, television on too loud. There is no prize for consistency and nobody is marking it.

My contractual obligations

Four. Achievable. Deliberately unimpressive.

01To notice the next January in week one, not week six, and to say so out loud instead of waiting to be told.

02To make you sit in the next Leeds for a full week before you are allowed near your inbox.

03To be the call you make while it is happening, not the one you make once it is handled.

04To book four days with no plan, and to lose the argument about the shoes.

January was a write-off

and you turned up to every day of it.

No party. No card. Nothing.

Administrative oversight, now corrected.

Speech. Everyone sit down.

To you, to Leeds, and to the wrong shoes.

To January, and to going every single day of it.

To Leeds, and to the cards you never once looked at.

To four days, no plan, and the wrong shoes on a beach.

To everything you carried without sending anybody the bill.

And to a quieter year than the last one, with a longer August in it.

One more thing

You are not working that week.

Four days was not enough and we both know it. You said so in the car on the way back, once, and then never mentioned it again.

I have taken the week off for you. I have also spoken to the two people who would otherwise have asked you for something on the Wednesday.

One more, and then cake

I have registered a star in your name. This is what happens when you leave me unsupervised.

Real one. Catalogued. Coordinates and everything. I checked them twice, which tells you how the evening went.

Antares

Scorpius, the scorpion

Designation: Alpha Scorpii
Constellation: Scorpius, the scorpion
Right ascension: 16h 29m 24s
Declination: −26° 25′ 55″
Magnitude: 1.06
Distance: 550 light years
Type: Red supergiant with a companion
Dedicated to: Ishita

A red supergiant so large that if you put it where our sun is, it would swallow the orbit of Mars. Its name means "rival of Mars", because ancient observers kept mistaking the two. Something enormous, mistaken for something ordinary, for most of recorded history.

It is big enough to eat the orbit of Mars, and for three thousand years people kept confusing it with something unremarkable. Sound like anyone you know, who worked through January, wrote six weeks of cards nobody looked at, and then said the year had been fine.

Southern sky. You would have to travel to see it, which is rather the point.

Sincere bit. Nearly there, I promise.

You will read this between two meetings, say it was lovely, and never mention it again. I know precisely how you handle being given anything. The important part is this.

You are everyone’s emergency contact. That is a life spent being extremely useful and barely ever celebrated, and you have engineered it that way on purpose so that nobody has to make a fuss over you, which is an elaborate amount of work to avoid one afternoon of attention.

January: nothing worked, you went every day, you told nobody. May: something finally went right, you allowed it four hours. August: four days, no plan, wrong shoes, best you have looked all year. I have been keeping score the entire time, badly, because it was plain that you were not.

Today you are off duty. That is the present. The other thing is also a present, but this is the real one, and it requires nothing of you.

— many happy returns, etc.

Another full lap of the sun,

completed with minimal complaint,

six weeks of January absorbed,

and no formal recognition

of any kind.

Until now. Late, but now.

Happy birthday, you.

Now go and be spectacularly unproductive. Wrong shoes. No alarm. Nothing fixed for anyone, all day.

made over several late evenings, badly