The non-party of the first part
I had been planning to have a birthday party this year; partly just because it's been a long time since I've had one, partly because it felt simpler/easier than having one for a Big Round-Number Birthday next year, partly just to see friends and celebrate.
But my original plan was to have it on the 25th, and I failed to get my act together, and the 25th is now much too soon, so I was going to move it to the 1st, but that's also fairly soon now. And I realized this morning that all the requisite planning and decisionmaking and preparation was feeling like a chore rather than something fun. I've been low on social energy lately even by my usual standards; I think a big party would be less fun for me right now than it would be worth.
So I decided not to have a birthday party after all. Maybe later in the year I'll try to have a party with more notice, we'll see.
(One of the sticking points for this was that I wanted to make it an evening party like I used to have, rather than an afternoon thing like most of the (few) events I've hosted in the past few years. But this is a quiet neighborhood and I think my neighbors would get upset if I had a party that lasted too late into the night. I think I can probably do something like 8-11 pm without it being too much of a problem (especially if I tell my nearest neighbors to let me know if it's too loud), but figuring out all that seemed like a hassle.)