Today was a really busy day and I didn’t get around to answering the daily prompt like usual, but for good reason! I’ve spent just about all day with family for the Easter holiday and a belated birthday dinner for me.
For those of you out there that celebrate Easter, I hope you had a wonderful day!
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?
This is a tough question to decide on, not because it’s going to be a serious answer but rather that it CAN’T be serious. I have nothing noteworthy to tie my name to, to have something be named after me and carry on a legacy of sorts.
I’ll just go through a couple ideas.
I think it would be neat to have a technique named after me, the Taylor Technique, and it could be in something like construction. No idea how or why, I just think it would be amusing to me and neat to see.
Or maybe a demolition technique. The Taylor Topple? I don’t know, it’s silly, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
What makes you laugh?
There are a lot of things that can make me laugh. Sometimes it’s just a matter of mood or circumstances.
I enjoy dark and morbid humor, but I respect that there is a time and place for it. I won’t always laugh at it but I can definitely still see the potential ramifications for why it would make someone laugh even if the current situation is very serious and not a laughing matter.
More often than not, though, I am enjoying silly humor, dirty jokes, terrible puns, and creating stupid portmanteaus for situations. Kind of like the silly and clever names for the daily special in Bob’s Burger’s.
I’m not a big fan of situations where someone is harmed or injured. If I was a part of the situation or present for the incident and I can look back on it years later with everyone, then that’s a different story.
Honestly, there’s quite a lot that can make me laugh.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I can now say that this was over 30 years ago for me, so I can’t really recall if I had ever answered this question when I was five. Not that it really mattered then and I only cared about having fun. In the eyes of five-year-old me the world was very different and much smaller, so I probably gave stereotypical answers like wanting to be a firefighter or astronaut.
While I can’t recall what I might have thought at five years old, I can at least say that somewhere between the ages of 11 and 14 I had wanted to make games for a living and was even looking into how to enroll at Digipen in Washington. That obviously never happened, but that should give you some idea of how differently my life turned out by going from Colorado to South Dakota instead of Washington.
I feel like the vast majority of people who see people posting dumb shit on social media and YouTube don’t fully understand the effort that can go into content creation.
Now, this also includes the people who decide to post that dumb shit, because a lot of them start off with the mentality “oh that’s easy, I can do that too, and I’ll make millions!” That’s not the case. At all. Granted, the most popular people on social media had to start somewhere but there is also the element of luck to consider.
Putting luck aside, the effort that the SUCCESSFUL people on social media and streaming platforms put in is incredible and varies depending on the style of content they’re choosing to create. In my case I can at least talk about streaming since I did that off and on for years as a hobby.
Most people don’t understand the amount of time and effort that gets invested into streaming. You might think it’s as easy as pushing a button to stream to the world and just sit at your desk playing games for a few hours, but there is much more to it than that. Especially if you have any intent to turn it into a “career” of some kind. You need the right equipment/software and know how to use it. You need to understand the target audience. What games do you like? What games do THEY like? What is your style of game play and audience interaction? Are you really good at a particular game, or are you clever/witty/funny? What’s the best time to stream at and can it fit into your schedule? How are you reaching your target audience to let them know you’re live? Are you streaming often enough? Are you limiting yourself to just streaming on a single platform or are you branching out somehow? What are the current trends in gaming? How do you get ahead of everyone and not feel like you’re riding on the coattails of big streamers who are nearing the end of their time interested in a game or genre? Boiling it all down into a singular question “How do you go from pushing the Live button to making it into a career?”
More and more questions your should be asking yourself the further you go down that rabbit hole. You can’t just record yourself doing something silly or dumb and expect to be famous the next day. People who experience that are incredibly lucky, and chances are it’s a flash in the pan kind of moment and it’ll never happen again. You can increase your odds of success by answering the questions I asked above and putting in the effort, but even then, it isn’t a guarantee.
If you want to break it down into something quantifiable like making a living then you can look into the numbers that are out there, but I can at least provide a hypothetical example for you to chew on.
on Twitch a Tier 1 sub costs a user US$4.99 before taxes. The streamer receives a 50% cut of that. Using nice even numbers that puts it US$2.50. If you were lucky enough to live in a part of the country where the cost of living was cheap, and you had no debts, and you could live off US$50,000 per year, what does that equate to in Twitch subs? That’s 20,000 subs. I don’t have the actual Follower to Subscriber conversion percentages at hand as I’m writing this, but if you were fortunate enough to have 20% of your followers convert to subs, you would need 100,000 followers on Twitch. Let me share a tweet with you all to offer some perspective. CommanderRoot shares a lot of fascinating statistics, and this tweet of theirs from December of 2020 likely still holds some truth to it in 2024. https://x.com/CommanderRoot/status/1336488690986717184
By the end of 2020 less than 4,000 streamers on the entire Twitch platform had greater than 100,000 followers. There are roughly 7,000,000 streamers on Twitch today in 2024, so assuming the numbers haven’t changed drastically between then and now we can do some more math. Using nice even numbers, if my math is right, that means approximately 0.06% of streamers on the entire platform meet the completely hypothetical criteria I set before. (Personally, I’d say the criteria are very optimistic compared to whatever the real numbers are.)
This is why I say most people don’t understand the effort that goes into streaming. If you want this to be a career and you have nothing else going for you, if you want to keep trying, then maybe someday you’ll get up there, but it’s going to take a TREMENDOUS amount of time and effort that you’re not going to get back, and this is all just in streaming on Twitch. At the core of all of this, you can figure out the basic idea and apply it to other forms of content creation, like writing. Follow the questions, follow the numbers, get your answer. No matter what you’re doing, do you understand it enough to know where to aim yourself?
How has technology changed your job?
Growing up I always watched my Dad leave for work in the morning and come home in the evening. After I finally graduated college, I was doing the same. Leaving home for the office in the morning and returning in the evening.
Well, until the pandemic happened. It’s the same story as a great many people. Technology had come a long way in the decades preceding the pandemic to allow millions of people to work from home. In my Dad’s case he lives in the country and has fast enough internet to do his work and stream Netflix. Myself, after restrictions in my State were lifted, I chose to go back to the office because I don’t have an entire house to myself to make an office and I didn’t want to feel locked in my bedroom all the time again. Well, after a couple years of that, I more or less went hybrid, but only based on need. That is where technology has changed my job.
I have a work laptop set up at home near my normal computer and hobby space, and a desktop machine back in the office. On the days I work from home I can remote into my desktop and take advantage of its better hardware and processing power, and then minimize that window to use my laptop properly for other things. It’s a little awkward, having a pseudo four monitor setup on a laptop screen and one spare monitor, but it works. The days I choose to work in the office I just need my desktop and the three monitors I already have there, no need to remote into a less powerful laptop.
That’s about the gist of it lately. I know it’s one of the biggest topics in the last few years but I don’t use any sort of AI tools so I can’t talk about how those may have changed my job. So we’ll leave it at the remote telecommuting for now.
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
Short answer: Not enough.
I’ve talked about some of my goals previously, like losing weight/getting in shape/eating better and aiming to get a novel published. One of my problems is that I enjoy some of my hobbies so much that I prefer to do those instead.
Another problem, and one I see as having more impact on my decisions, is that I don’t always have the mental or physical bandwidth to work on those goals when I already dedicate quite a bit to my full-time job. The funny part of this is that I don’t really have a problem saying “no” to things at work!
It isn’t that I refuse to say “yes” to things at work, I’m just very conscious of the work my teammates and I do. Every “yes” and “no” is very calculated. I will bend over backwards to help my teammates because I know they would do (and have done) the same for me. We each bring to the table different skills, personalities, and work styles. I try to keep these things in mind every time I have to help them, even if it’s just to be a sounding board to bounce ideas off of because sometimes the situation they find themselves in requires a “no” and they struggle to accept that conclusion. The reason being that a couple of them will sometimes take on work that they aren’t responsible for and not ask for help from the rest of us or put the onus back on the appropriate team/individual who SHOULD be responsible for that work.”Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” That kind of thing.
So, from a work perspective I say “no” plenty enough, but on an overall personal level I could stand to say it more often. Especially to myself.
I’m sure some armchair psychologist/psychiatrist behind a screen could stumble across this post and think they know exactly what is wrong with this picture, but I have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t that easy. (This means I’m not looking for unsolicited advice, thank you.) I bring this up because I see people on social media think they can do a self-diagnosis all the time, plus I was recently watching some videos on YouTube from Dr. K (HealthyGamerGG, in case anyone wants to look into it themselves.)
What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?
There are so many skills and abilities that people have dreamed up that are completely amazing, and I go back and forth wishing I had any of them.
Flight? Speed? Strength? Standard comic book hero powers like that come to mind, but then I’m reminded of the abilities that characters had on the show Heroes.
I think if there was just one I wish I could have it would be that “empathy” ability that Peter had on Heroes. Then I could have access to so many others! That would be incredible. Although, I don’t recall if he got to keep any of the mimicked abilities or if it was a temporary thing. Either way, it would still be awesome.
What is your favorite type of weather?
I’m kind of an oddball about the weather. Seasons and locations are important to me when I think about the different kinds of weather I like. I like living in a place where I can experience all four seasons because that’s the only way to truly appreciate just how different the same kinds of weather can be.
Starting with Winter where I live, you can have a temperature range from far below zero up to the 50’s (though that isn’t too common.) Because of this wide range we can experience cold weather with different kinds of snow. Tiny snowflakes carried by a fierce wind that pelt the face. Huge snowflakes on a nearly windless day that fill the air like a gentle, feathery blanket. One of these is obviously less comfortable to be out in, but both can put you in the mood to stay inside wrapped in warm blankets with hot cocoa and a good book, all nice and cozy like.
Spring and Summer offer rain, hail, and tornadoes. Definitely not fond of hail and tornadoes, so skipping over those to rain. Rain can be just like snow! Not just because both are made of water but because they can fall in the same amounts and sizes of droplets/flakes. The only difference in that particular regard is speed. Rain falls much faster. Tiny raindrops, sprinkling across things like a fine mist. Huge raindrops that can threaten us with flash floods and make it almost feel like you’re walking through a swimming pool. I mentioned temperature for Winter, so I should touch on that here as well. Cold and hot rain is a thing to consider when deciding if it’s your favorite kind of weather, alongside the general temperature of the season. Warm rain on an 80-90°F day is different from the same rain on a day in the 100’s.
Anyways, none of that really answers the question. What IS my favorite kind of weather? I understand that bugs are a part of nature and we need them for the cycle of life, but Winter beats Spring and Summer because there are no bugs. So, that’s where my generally favorite kind of weather is! I mentioned those huge, pillowy snowflakes before and I find it to be a calm, relaxing kind of weather event. I like how it makes the world feel a little quieter, more peaceful and serene. If I know I have to be out and about for the day then I like the days where that snow doesn’t stick to the ground too much and just melts fairly quickly. It adds another layer to the overall experience. Factor in time of day and lighting, and now you’ve got yet another layer! Like those Christmas movies where the snow and the light make everything seem magical.
That’s the kind of weather I enjoy most because I can go out in it and experience it, or choose to stay inside and be cozy.
This is going to sound a little weird. I don’t know that I could qualify a teacher in my life who had the most influence on me. However, I can say that I know a teacher who qualifies beyond that on the influence she has had on the lives of my family and friends.
Roughly 20 years ago, when my family still lived in Colorado, Kelly Gibson was my teacher, and my sister’s teacher before me. She taught English and Theater. Sadly, I had other English teachers, so I had the amazing chance to have her as a teacher for one Theater and Improv class instead.
As I recall, my sister had started participating in theater before high school, and my mom helped with costumes and makeup, so if anyone could share more information about Kelly it would be them. If this leaves you wondering why I would bring her up as an influential teacher despite my limited time with her, it’s because of the reach she has managed to develop in the years since.
If you know who Guy Kawasaki is, you may have heard him talk with Kelly on his podcast Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People. If not, you can listen to the particular episode on Spotify here. (If you don’t use Spotify, I’m sorry, but you can look it up by title “Kelly Gibson: The Real World of a Public School Teacher”.)
So, while she may not have had the level of influence on me that I may have hoped for when compared to the time my sister got with her, you can hopefully tell just how influential she is even if I don’t have anything to provide as an answer to the prompt.
The Dragon's Grove 