My first birthday alone

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. I am a Gemini, so my birthday's proximity has me in my memories. Generally speaking, my birthdays as a child were good when my father was home. When I became a teenager, my birthdays were much more humble aside from one that I spent in DC - which I should put to text sometime soon. I have a few distinct birthday memories as an adult as well, the best of which were because of my wife. However, today I am remembering the first birthday I ever spent truly alone - when I was an intern working in the small city of Palestine, TX. It was my last summer in graduate school, and I was interning with the local city government. My main task was to use my journalism training and video editing skills to help cover local events and locations to help promote the city, while also helping the mechanisms of local government (I was, after all, a political science major). I published a blog for the city that was about my experiences as an…