Oh, what a night.

Another year around the sun for me, and another endlessly fun birthday party in the memory bank.

Heather & I make a great team, not just running a business, but also at bringing our friends together and creating a space where everyone feels happy. (As I wrote that, I realized that perfectly describes our business too...)

It’ll be an interesting experiment for me to write about the deeper meaning and importance of throwing a good ol’ fashioned house party, but that’s exactly what I’ll try to do here if you bear with me.

Let’s start with this advice: Throw more parties.

Small parties. Big Parties. It doesn’t matter, just get your friends together and have an adult hang.

Ok. So, there I was…dressed in a new purple track suit (thank you, Heather) surrounded by a room full of my favorite people. The music turned down, Heather handed me my donut cake, someone yelled “Speech!”, and I froze a bit.

I realized in the moment that I had a million things to say, not just about how much it meant to me, or how seriously meaningful this very un-serious night was in my life. I wanted to express to everyone that my happiness in that moment had nothing to do with being celebrated on my birthday. For me, my birthday was just the excuse, it was our party. Something I felt like we all needed.

But instead, I think I just said “Thank you for being here, I love you all” at least 5 times in a row, and hopefully I still got the point across.

Somewhere in my psyche, there’s still a lot of PTSD from the COVID quarantine days. It all comes to the surface when I look around a room and see my favorite people in close quarters. And I’m determined to use that PTSD for good.

It all means so much more to me now, because we all lived through what happens when it gets taken away without warning.

We all experienced an alternate reality of what life could be like, like Scrooge getting visited by the 3 ghosts, but it lasted for months on end. And then, we all got a second chance.

In 2023, just as life was seemingly returning to normal, I lost a best friend to colon cancer. And while at first it seemed like there was no second chance to be found there, it came in the form of a wake-up call for our entire group of friends.

Get together more, speak your heart, and celebrate the gift we’ve all got of being able to spend time together, because it can all disappear without warning.

You can do all of this one-on-one with a friend, and you should.

But, something magical happens when you look around and see so many of the people you love in one room. It’s no longer a get-together, it’s a damn party.

All night long, I could see the healing effects it had. Friends telling me how happy they were, and how we need to do this more often. I saw friends reconnect who hadn’t seen each other in years. And the next day, in the midst of what I’m sure was many collective hangovers, I still got several texts that all said, in one form or another, “I really needed that”.

We all did. And we all do.

So, instead of dreaming about it, or talking about the golden days of our youth like they’re legendary stories of the past, my birthday wish is that you remember that these are the good ol’ days.

Make a list of your favorite people, find a reason or no reason at all, give people enough time to plan it and get the sitters if need be, and make it happen.

- Seth