Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
I think the closest comparison I could come up with is the house cat. I don’t go anywhere, I meander about life on my own whims (sort of), I enjoy sleeping/napping about the house. I also have food I can eat in the house, but often look at it and pretend it’s not there so I just order out.
That’s about it.
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
There is a very high probability that I won’t see the age of 100, unless medical science finds a way to extend my life by an extra 30 years, give or take a decade.
Either way, here goes.
Dear Future Me,
How is the year 2088? Just kidding, I don’t care because Current Me (Past You) wouldn’t be able to receive your response, but I’ll catch up eventually and learn about it anyway when I become You. I hope Current Me and Tomorrow Us did alright did alright by You.
See you eventually,
Past You
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
I get that the idea is to just pick a store that has all kinds of things you really want and to not think too hard about the process or aftermath. Like, you go somewhere and buy thousands of dollars of stuff, but where are you going to put it? I bring this up because for some bizarre reason, when I first read this prompt, I thought IKEA just to be funny.
If I had a house of my own and needed to furnish it, I COULD go on a shopping spree at IKEA, but then I remembered I would be putting everything together myself. So, scratch that idea.
After that whole thought process ran its course, I thought about my hobbies. I could go somewhere like Best Buy for a shopping spree. New TV and sound system for a house, new washer and dryer, maybe a new fridge…wait, nope, did it again. I wouldn’t have room for any of it. So, maybe just the computer parts, monitors, video games and consoles. Stuff like that gets expensive, so a carte blanche shopping spree for all of that could be fun. Although, if I were to focus on that type of stuff I would be better off going to Micro Center because they specialize in computer parts. That would be the way to go.
JOKES ON YOU SOCIAL ENGINEERS! You’re not getting MY middle name.
Okay, for real, every one of these prompts that asks for some piece of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that can be used for account Security Questions is a risk. So, here’s your friendly PSA: Be mindful of the information you share online.
HOWEVER! I will offer this as an answer to the prompt. My middle name is from my grandfather.
What is the last thing you learned?
This is hard to pick out. I haven’t kept track of the exact items or concepts I’ve learned recently, because I’m always looking to make sure I understand what I’m doing and improving myself along the way.
Of course, I’m also probably just making this out to be more difficult than it needs to be. If I didn’t want to think about this from the angle of “worthwhile lesson” I could just list off things I’ve learned from random YouTube videos that aren’t about useful life skills.
Oh well.
I guess I could just go down that route anyway.
I learned some interesting tricks that people use to speedrun Baldur’s Gate 3. Like the way that you can effectively carry an NPC while invisible, or you can carry a dead teammate in your inventory, so long as your character has a high enough Strength stat. In conjunction with carrying the body of a teammate in your inventory, you can also “reverse pickpocket” that teammate’s body into an NPC’s inventory and then use a teleportation skill that swaps positions between character and dead teammate.
Wild things happening in these any% speedruns. If I could have figured these things out on my own my first playthrough would have been WAY different.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
I’m not sure how anyone reading this will react or what their opinion of me will be afterwards, but if I were worried about that I wouldn’t be sharing.
One question I hate that immediately came to mind after reading the prompt:
“How can I make it up to you?”
Depending on the situation/circumstances I have different reactions to this kind of question, but they are all based in the same area of my mind. I can forgive some and let it slide, but those situations are few and far between for when the question actually gets used.
I’ve had “friends” that borrowed things from me, and although they did ultimately return the item, they misused it in the exact way I told them not to. Sound too vague? Here’s a story.
I was in my early 20’s and just out of college trying to find a job. TRYING to get out from under my parents. I ended up moving in with some friends when one of them bought a fixer upper house. Cheap rent and utilities, and the house was livable regardless. One of these friends wanted to borrow my laptop. I said “sure, but no looking at porn.” I was very clear about that because I had a sneaking suspicion that they would.
Why would you lend them your laptop in the first place if you were suspicious of them? That’s kind of weird.
I had reasons to doubt their intentions but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they obviously did misuse my laptop, but they thought they were being clever and used one of the web browsers I had installed but never used, thinking I wouldn’t check it. They were wrong.
I calmly confronted them, no yelling, no anger, just pure fact. I told them I’m not going to lend them my laptop again because they did the one thing I asked them not to.
If you’re this far into the post and thinking I’m overreacting, I applaud you for not “yucking someone else’s yum” as a Canadian friend of mine would put it. Regardless, the concern is less about the content in this case, and more about compromising the security of my laptop. Porn sites used to have a notorious reputation for trying to install shit in the background. Whether that’s still true 10+ years later I don’t know and don’t really care.
ANYWAYS! I told them no more and they asked the dreaded question that is inspiring this post.
“How can I make it up to you?”
In my mind, at that time, if you had to ask that question then you don’t understand the situation you have put yourself into. Breech of trust, and in an immaterial way that can’t really be redeemed because it’s not like you broke something and can just replace it. If you had to ask that question then you don’t respect the situation you have put ME into. Asking me to try to think of a way for them to redeem themselves in my eyes was almost LAZY on their part because to me it meant they didn’t want to have to put effort into thinking about what they did wrong and the lesson that should be learned.
As I recall the situation, I gave them a similar but abbreviated answer along with a simple “You can’t.”
In that situation I don’t think there was anything they could have done. That’s why I responded the way they did.
I know this question sometimes gets asked in response to honest mistakes, but as I said before these situations are rare. At least in my experience.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
I glanced at this prompt as I was getting ready for work this morning and used my short “meditative morning commute” to let my thoughts build themselves around the question.
FromSoftware has built up a reputation for making difficult games, however, the reality is that their games don’t follow or utilize many standard/common game design elements that the majority of players are used to. This made for the eventual creation of the “Soulsborne” genre of games. Brutally difficult for beginners, but exceedingly rewarding with that feeling of accomplishment when you make progress and beat a seemingly insurmountable boss.
Their game Elden Ring is no exception. In fact, it dials it up a notch!
You have the potential to build your character for any play style you choose (and yet you will invariably get your ass kicked at some point.) I always liked doing dexterity builds, using light weapons for quick attacks and being able to dodge out of the way, so that’s where I started my character build. I ended up layering in magic quite a bit not long after starting.
Being a dexterity and magic focused build, my character was squishy. Not a lot of defense or health so most everything, not just bosses, could stagger or kill me in one or two hits. It took a while to get used to the timings of everything, dying over and over again, but eventually I did.
Every time I died, every failure, became a chance to try something different. Charging in and catching the enemies off guard? Checked. Sneaking in and pulling off a backstab? Tried. Attacking with magic from a distance? Sometimes a good start. Learning the parry timings? That eventually became paramount to my build. It took a lot of experimenting, learning different magics, finding and trying different weapons and shields over the course of more than a hundred hours just to get through the game.
There was one particular “hidden” boss that I got really stubborn about wanting to beat. I didn’t keep an exact count, but I probably died 60-80 times until I finally nailed down the parry timings and learned the distances I needed to work within to control the actions of the boss so that I could make it through the fight. Amazingly, I did it without a scratch in the last attempt, AND I have it recorded! If you’re curious you can check it out on my YouTube channel that I never really used.
Two or three hours of failed attempts, dying over and over again, boiled down to a three minute fight. The feeling of satisfaction at beating it was incredible!
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
Writing about my life in the past tense, trying to come up with a solid opening sentence, is not an easy ask. I’m not even sure how to properly write an autobiography. Obviously it’s me writing about myself but does that mean I HAVE to write in the First Person? Could I be weird and write in the Third Person?
“Taylor was a…” you know, something like that? Nevermind, that just feels weird.
“My life was like a waterslide, minus the water and the slide.” I’m not sure where I got this, it just seemed funny and potentially catchy. I probably wouldn’t actually use that sentence if I really wrote an autobiography, but now that I’ve included it in this post maybe I could.
Honestly, I have no idea what the opening sentence would be. As I’m writing this I’m only in my mid-30’s so there is likely still a LONG time to go before it would be worth writing at all. Maybe I should write sections of it now and keep them for later in the event I do write my autobiography…
What are three objects you couldn’t live without?
“Amazing” might be a stretch, but if you consider that I couldn’t live without them then they must be somewhat amazing, right?
Sadly, my cellphone is probably the number one object on the list. I use it for so many things. Alarm clock, email, research, writing this post. I use it for tracking my activities on a personal calendar and using OneNote to jot down writing ideas. That piece of technology has come a long way and has become an integral part of so many lives, for better or worse.
I’d say the next one is my car. I live in a part of the country where having a reliable vehicle is almost a requirement. Especially when my family lives 30+ miles away.
The last object that I couldn’t live without could be a toss up. For the purposes of today’s post I’ll just run with my wallet. It contains my ID and various ways of paying for things. I primarily use cash, so the wallet is necessary in that regard.
Anyways, keeping today’s post relatively short. Happy Sunday folks!
What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
Personal growth is unique to everyone. What one person learns from a situation or experience is likely different from someone else, either as an entirely different lesson or sheer impact/value.
I don’t know that I can recall a specific situation that I could unequivocally say helped me grow the most, but I do have something that comes to mind every so often.
This was nearly eight years ago now, way back when we were all still office workers and nobody worked from home. I was 28 and the only other guy on my small team was probably 23. A few months in I was still fairly new at my job, but they had more or less taken off the training wheels, and I was participating in projects on my own. I ran into a situation of being double booked on my calendar and had to make a decision to attend one or the other. I felt like I had an okay understanding of the dynamics of the role and my working relationship with one particular Project Manager, so I picked one meeting and sent an email with my project updates to that PM. They responded to the email, so I knew they got the message. Come time for the meetings and I could hear over the cubicle walls my name being called by that same PM I had emailed earlier. They were asking for my update! Well, I couldn’t jump to that call and it was too late to answer. The meetings end, and maybe a minute or two later my manager comes over and asks me to come to her office to discuss something. I follow her and see the younger guy on my team waiting in her office. He happened to sit closer to that one PM, and had overheard that I had been called out on the meeting and didn’t respond, so he told our manager! Well, I was chided for the incident and told that it reflected poorly on our teams reputation. I apologized for the incident and explained what I had done and that I didn’t think it would be a problem. From then on I was more careful about meeting attendance and information sharing, but unfortunately I also didn’t trust the other guy on the team.
Over the course of that year (I had started in January) the entire original team I started with had progressively left the team. The two ladies had gone to another department, and the younger guy left the company altogether. We had new people join the team in their places as the spots opened up. The entire dynamic of the team, the collective mentality of our group, changed so much (for the better) that we are so much more flexible and nimble. My manager is more understanding now, and even occasionally encourages us to do something similar to what I did that first time. Strategically, of course.
Suffice to say, I may have been the catalyst of change on the whole team. Eight years later our team’s reputation has never been stronger.
The Dragon's Grove 