Birthdays are weird. I know they're supposed to be all celebratory and happy, and sometimes they are, but often they just remind me of my mortality (I know, sorry). Instead of focusing on the good parts of getting older, like the ways I've hopefully evolved and how I've learned to care less about trivial things, I think about how I'll never be a certain age again or wonder if I've been living "right," whatever that means.

The other day I stumbled across an old Word document filled with my favorite passages from Diana Vreeland's autobiography. It started out like this:

"I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring…and so many Americans can’t get on with it. They’re haunted by aging, by getting old. I think it’s because of this terrible retirement thing. If you’re through with work, what do you do with yourself?

There’s an excellent profile in Interview in which Jeanne Moreau says: ‘I shall die very young.’

‘How young?’ they ask her.

‘I don’t know, maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.’"

Underneath that I had written, "The liver is vital—and don’t forget the gallbladder!" Diana must have been a trip and a half. What I would GIVE to have dinner and dessert and every meal with her.

I'm probably in denial about getting older, but I'm also realizing that maybe the key to feeling okay is to just get back to the person you were when you were a kid. Before you started subconsciously editing your life to impress institutions, parents, friends, strangers, yourself. Lately I've been trying to be more of that person. This past year I started taking more dance classes, writing for myself, and wearing more pink. I also quit my job to see what less structure and more freedom felt like (turns out, pretty great).

We act like we leave certain ages behind when we reach new milestones, but isn't every age that we’ve lived still a part of us in some way? Why can’t we be 29 and also 16 (I mean, within reason)? It’s all just perspective, right? These are the thoughts that knock me over the head as I'm climbing the unreasonably steep hills around LA, a new ritual that's been keeping me sane while in quarantine.

As soon as I'm feeling completely calm about everything though—everything being aging and this new oddly shaped reality we're in—the world is like, just kidding! I started watching this Instagram Live the other day, and the celebrity moderating it looked like a perfect hologram. Her airbrushed makeup, Pantene hair... she had on this cute knit pajama set that probably cost, like, $300. My brain: why don't I own a knit pajama set? Where does one buy a nice knit pajama set? How does anyone look that good right now? I had to put my phone down before I fell into a black hole.

Holograms aside, I've been obsessed with watching Instagram Lives lately because, ironically, they feel real at a time when so many things don't. I get pleasure out of watching people in the public eye try to work technology, accidentally flipping the camera so everyone can see their notes or not realizing the sound isn't working until their roommate appears offscreen to give them an awkward heads up. It's the 2020 version of Celebrities—They're Just Like Us! and it's extremely soothing. There’s a real comfort and relief in watching people figure things out right in front of your eyes. It's a reminder that we're all just fumbling around, fucking up, and trying our best.