Today was my birthday, and I decided not to celebrate it

For the past three years, I celebrated my birthday abroad. Every autumn, I used to travel to other countries, so I always celebrated it there. Also, autumn in my country is quite difficult — it’s rainy, cold, and there’s almost no sun. In short, the weather in autumn is very bad, and I never enjoy it. That’s why I started leaving my country and spending some time abroad until December. However, this time I decided to stay here for a while because I had some things to handle related to my visa.

This day was just like usual, even though it was my birthday. I woke up at 8 AM and did my morning routine. After that, I prepared a light breakfast. For breakfast, I ate oatmeal, half of a banana, and a small bunch of grapes. For my drink, I chose orange juice because I really love it — it’s one of my favorite drinks.

After breakfast, I had enough time before work, so I decided to lie down and continue watching my show. They talked every day about the government shutdown in the USA. If I understand correctly, it has already lasted for more than eight days. Honestly, I still don’t fully understand how it can happen. I only understood one thing: if Congress and the President can’t agree on the federal budget for some programs, the government shuts down, and all government employees don’t get their salaries during this time.

My workday was a bit unusual. At first, my colleagues started congratulating me and another colleague because today our department had two birthdays. Then, when my team lead mentioned it in the main chat, everything went crazy — everyone started writing and sending GIFs. It was a big boom! Yeah, it happens about two or three times every week because there are around 200 employees.

The evening was as usual. We just prepared a simple table and, while having casual conversations, started our dinner. For dinner, we invited our cousins. It was a cozy family dinner for five people, where we talked about different things and discussed some important topics.