The slow decay of my physical form cannot be arrested by Earth technology.
Usually this is an excellent opportunity to get some loot into my life; every birthday, I come up with a list of stuff to pad out my meagre earthly existence. This year’s been funny though: with my recent bout of introspection and continuing evolution into intrisic vs. extrinsic rewards, I find that there’s little stuff I want. Let’s not even get started on need.
Don’t you worry. I’ve risen to the challenge and come up with a few choice items, but what I’ve found is that the things I’m trending towards wanting are … less stuff. The list of loot demands are trending towards things that provide experiences and nothing that looks like a consumer electronic or toy or widget.
It reminds me a little of my 40th birthday (still recent enough to be within living memory), where I asked people to give things to other people instead of me. You know, donate a goat to a family in the Sudan or whatever. That fell a little flat on the delivery side of things — most people turned up for the open bar, got drunk, and completely forgot there was a birthday in there somewhere. Whatever, I enjoyed the idea that people could benefit from the advancement of my mortal coil towards its extinction.
I feel like I don’t know myself anymore.