A curious thing about the birthday greetings I got yesterday is that more than a few people shared condolences about how I all at once an entire year older.  Another is "oh. I didn't realize you were older than me."  This is common at school, where roughly half of my peers are 23+ and the other are right on track for regular college age.
I am treated like I am 20, and I don't mind some extra years of wisdom while being underestimated.  But what I can't understand is why anyone would mourn time passing-
(Although I vividly remember lying in my bed in Hillsborough when I was 19/20 feeling very, very old.   Grabbing my stomach thinking, it would be ok, I could learn to love you if you would just never change.  People I love hate bob dylan but his songs are still my walking home very late at night drunk or sober anthems.)
 - since passing time is inevitable and standardized only by human contraptions and is actually fairly interesting - all of those things.

Why mourn things you can't get out of, that happen to everyone?  Growing old is a given, but it isn't as if time has a predictable trajectory.  People talk about growing up and maturity like it is something that happens.  I believe it is a more manual process: Sitting through a very lame recital when your legs are falling asleep because courtesy is contagious; listening to your crazy sister talk about tv series because you love her; eating birthday cake for breakfast but making sure you eat something nutritious for lunch.  That insecurities, and excuses, guilt, panic, and fear of missing out is imaginary or as real as I let it become.  (This is almost exactly what I felt when I was 21 and 20 according to things I wrote too dumb to put on the internet, which is why I should be writing fiction instead of talking about myself for decades)

          We have admiration for people who are really good at something.  But someone who imagines a musician has always been great, did not scrape it by force, is a fool.  I feel especially optimistic at this time in my life, although I am an old lady at 24, because I'm in the middle of things blossoming.  I spend time every day doing things that change with time and me, which I've picked because they have potential for indefinitely unfolding mysteries.  And interesting plateaus.

The far-flung birthday greetings on my facebook wall, which wrenched me around thinking of how I knew these people and where and who I was, has forced me to conclude that life is rich and long.  Fifteen more different selves, even if I only live 24 years again.  The trend is that I deactivate my facebook when I am either the most content or the loneliest or trying to memorize a fugue.