Day: April 10, 2024

Making positive changes

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

Describe one positive change you have made in your life.

I don’t know where to start. Not because I’ve made so many positive changes that it’s hard to choose, but rather that I don’t know how to qualify something as a positive change versus just a change that eventually yielded a positive result.

Maybe I could just say my mindset regarding being insecure about what people think of me.

A big example I can give is around dental work. The guys in my family have terrible luck with dental problems, and not for a lack of decent dental hygiene. For me, the case was the way my wisdom teeth grew in against the rest. What ultimately happened with them and the way they impacted my other teeth led to me needing several teeth pulled, enough to warrant partial dentures.

This is what led to me being a little insecure at first. Needing dentures in my early 30’s was not something I felt particularly proud of because I saw them as a mark of shame almost. I didn’t want people knowing for fear of being judged.

It took a few years but I’ve more or less gotten over it by reminding myself it could have gotten worse if I hadn’t gone through with all of the necessary work, and nobody is going to know unless I tell them (like I’m telling all of you.) I just need to keep telling myself that shit happens, and this is my lot in life now, so no point in stressing over it when I have more important things to care about. People will naturally accept me for who I am and they will be the ones I can devote time and energy towards instead of worrying over the perspectives of people I may never meet.

There was an attempt: a writing contest

Taylor Burian2 Comments

A couple months ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a writing contest with cash prizes and writing feedback for all entrants, and since I’ve been on this journey of getting back into writing consistently, I thought I might give it a try. I was a little suspicious of how they were going to afford cash prizes until I saw there was an entry fee, but that only made me more suspicious of the whole thing. Was it actually a scam? Unfortunately, at the time, the deadline for signing up was only a day or two away and I knew nothing of writing contests so I had to do some quick research.

Thankfully this particular contest appeared reputable with a long history, so I signed up.

Anyways, the contest itself, through NYC Midnight, was for writing short stories. According to the rules there would be four rounds, and each entrant would have a limited amount of time to write based on a randomly selected prompt setup, of which the final output would be judged and a certain number from each group would move on. The rules also stated that we couldn’t publicly share our work until ten days after results for the round were announced. So, I won’t be sharing my round one entry here just yet.

Sadly, I did not pass round one, and now I’m just waiting for feedback. Cash prizes aside, that was a big draw for me to sign up, so I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of feedback I get on my writing.

I’m always looking to improve, so I’m not going to let this loss discourage me from continuing to write. Once I get my feedback and the ten days have passed I plan on sharing my one short story here, and then maybe you all can also provide some feedback!

We’ll see where things go from here.