Month: September 2024

Details everywhere

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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

Among all the details a person can monitor in their life, sometimes I wish it were easy to stick to things that require tedious and consistent tracking, and to be more specific, what I eat.

I’ve used different apps to log my food intake so I can have a rough idea of how much I’m eating versus how much energy I put out. (Currently I’m using “Lose It!” to track my calories.) And sometimes I do good at tracking meticulously every single day, while other times I’ll use it for a day or two, maybe a week, and then fall off the wagon again.

The reason I wish I paid more attention to these details is because these food tracking apps are getting more sophisticated, and the more people that use them the better they get. There is a plethora of data to be found in them, although sometimes it’s behind a paywall. Calories. Nutrients. Macros. Fasting windows. Eating periods. There are details in there that take a bit to notice, but also require some out of the box thinking for the normal person and a little extra effort. What am I eating and when? How did it make me feel? Is there a pattern? If I eat specific things at specific times on a routine enough frequency, is there an explanation?

This is just an example of one thing I could do to pay more attention to the details, but it’s a good way of looking at things in other areas. Reading between the lines, so to speak, to figure out the causal relations between everyday choices and actions.

It just takes a lot of work.

The start of the week

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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

As of the time of writing my answer to the prompt, tomorrow is Monday. The start of a normal work week for me, since I don’t have the day off, and I don’t believe I have much special going on throughout the week to prepare for, so my top priority is just work!

Tomorrow also happens to be the end of the month, so if I look at just work I can pick out a top priority there. End of month checks to get ready for monthly stats and reports is going to be the thing that gets immediate focus tomorrow.

That may sound a little boring, but it’s important stuff that needs doing, and I happen to enjoy it for the most part. Plus, it pays the bills. Major plus.

Fulfillment through work

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In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

Self-fulfillment is a little different for everyone. Some people, like myself, when we’re helping other people and working hard, if we succeed, it feels great to see that the end result made those people happy.

Sometimes, though, I do feel a little sense of fulfillment when I’ve worked hard and spent a lot of time on my mini painting and someone compliments the end result. Not often, but sometimes. Honestly, it should feel more fulfilling most of the time, but you know the saying “you’re your own worst critic,” so I end up always looking at the little flaws, mistakes, and imperfections, and trying to figure out how to improve. It’s not always easy to acknowledge those things, but I know there are times I’ve seen the results of that hard work as well, and that does a little to help me feel fulfilled because I know I’m on the right track.

In the end, it’s always the results that trigger the sense of fulfillment, and I know some people chase that feeling, but I try to remind myself that life itself is hard work and every day is full of choices and little victories. It helps me keep moving forward to the next big, fulfilling thing.

A valuable trait I like in myself

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What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

This is kind of a tough prompt for me to answer.

I pick out one, think about it a little and then second guess myself.

I don’t know that I can personally pick one that I VALUE the most. So I’ll pick the one I think I LIKE the most, even if it’s not 100% always the most valuable.

Personally, I think I’m fairly creative and clever, and I like that the most. It makes life more interesting. I can solve problems, easy or difficult, and sometimes do it in a way other people won’t pick up on right away. I can randomly pick up on some words or phrases in conversation with friends and create random, funny portmanteaus.

That’s all I’ve got today.

Hope everyone is having a good Friday!

Working if money didn’t matter

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List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

My first assumption about this question is more an observation about how people would perceive this concept. If money didn’t matter, and people still chose to work, then people would likely choose jobs that are, in the current economic climate of the United States, low paying and unable to provide a sustainable living wage.

My second assumption is based on the money aspect. If money didn’t matter, then it’s possible that proper equipment could be acquired to perform the jobs in question without hindering the pursuit of said jobs.

Keeping those things in mind, I would probably pick at least one artistic/creative job and a couple productive ones. Here are my three:

  • Farming: not sure what exactly I would farm, but I know that it’s a MASSIVE investment to farm at a large scale, and it takes a lot of work for very little return. Sure, some operations look glamorous because of the new equipment and fancy homes, but those aren’t as common as you might think and oftentimes farmers are actually burdened with a huge amount of debt. That being said, I think it would feel extremely rewarding to be able to produce things that people need and not have to worry about how to make ends meet. (Lots of this is anecdotal to most of you, but it’s based on what I’ve seen having lived in farm country for the better part of the last 20 years.)
  • Welding or construction of some kind: I like to work with my hands, and building/assembling things with people for people just feels like it would be rewarding. Plus I could learn a lot that I can apply to personal projects.
  • On the artistic and creative side – miniature painting: I’ve really grown to love painting miniatures. It’s taken time to gather tools, learn basic/intermediate techniques, and understand how colors work together. I am for sure still learning, and likely will be for years to come, but I know that some games require painted miniatures and people will pay for them to be really well done (making it a job, so it’s okay to include in this list) but it takes time. Time that can be spent on various other things I enjoy. So, if money didn’t matter, I could take up this job to replace what I’m currently doing and not have too much of a negative impact on the rest of the things I enjoy in life. (Naturally, I would include 3D printing in this because its amazing to print a custom figure/sculpture and paint it.)

Truly, it would be an amazing opportunity to be able to choose what you do for a living if money didn’t hold you back.

A cultural disconnect

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What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

For the most part, I know where my family comes from. One side is mostly Hungarian/German/Eastern European, and the other is English/Scottish/Welsh/etc. but my family doesn’t identify itself in ways that can be distinctly tied to any one of those backgrounds.

In that regard, I’m disconnected from any sort of cultural heritage outside of the United States, and even here I don’t recognize any “culture” that my family would be associated with here.

Culture is meant to be something that brings people together, something that they share and can rally around that helps distinguish them from other cultures. Music. Food. Art. Those kinds of things that make them stand out. My family doesn’t really have anything like that. For all intents and purposes, I’m just another “white dude in America” and I take no pride in the way things have been going in this country for the last couple decades. So much hate, intolerance, violence, and regression.

So, truly, I feel disconnected from the idea of “cultural heritage” because I don’t want to be associated with the things that my country, as a whole, have become predominantly known for to the rest of the world.

Brand associations and me

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What brands do you associate with?

Last I checked, I don’t really “associate” with any brands.

I say that, because, technically, brand association means people would use my name in the same sentence as the name of that brand, or I would actively be bringing them up in conversation. You know, something along the lines of “hey, have you tried [random brand]? I think they’re great.”

If you’ve caught the reference in some of my previous posts, you’ll notice that I refer to one of my previous employers by poorly describing their logo. That’s because I don’t want to call them out by name, and thereby be directly associated with them and their brand.

Sure, sometimes I make reference to other brands by name, but it’s moreso because of the situational requirement to be specific. In those cases I’m not associating with their brand because I’m not using their product or providing some kind of subjective opinion (although, if I have previously, I’m probably still trying to be productive and objective.)

So, again, I don’t really associate with any brands.

Doing a little more of…

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What could you do more of?

There are a few things I can throw out quickly to answer this question.

From a personal well-being standpoint, I could do more healthy/mindful eating, cooking at home, taking walks, and hitting the gym.

From a non-essential hobby standpoint, I could do more painting of the miniatures I already have (I have tons) and more reading (the backlog of books exploded last year).

I was recently asked how my streaming was going, to which I answered that it really wasn’t. I have streamed just once this year. I definitely could do more streaming, but I also told them that it takes a lot of work (because it really does, if you want to do it well).

I had really supplemented my social life by streaming up until the last couple of years, so I suppose I could do more getting out of the house and going to social functions. Meet new people, expand my horizons, or maybe even meet that special someone.

Regardless, there are tons of things I could do more of. It just takes time and prioritizing.

Forgetting the words but not the idea

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What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I’ve received so many different pieces of advice in my life that I don’t remember most of them, or at least the exact phrasing, but I still recall much of how they made me feel or think.

As for what’s the BEST one, I couldn’t really say. Advice is often situational, and less “one-size-fits-all”.

I think the one that comes to mind right now, not word for word but as close as I can recall, is that “[life/the world] keeps moving with or without you” because you can infer different things. Like the fact that other people have lives, too. The world keeps moving even if you’re not doing anything, so don’t just sit around waiting, because nobody else is going to wait for you forever. Sit around doing nothing and you should expect nothing in return.

So many different ways to phrase it, and all of them more or less mean the same thing.

How I get energized

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What things give you energy?

There few things in life that, even when I’m feeling kind of blah, will perk me up and get me going. Oddly enough, they don’t actually focus on me.

Where the rest of the things I do in life (the things that I normally enjoy) typically require determination, drive, and motivation, these things that energize me are more spontaneous and externally driven.

Taking care of and helping people, like family and friends. It doesn’t usually matter what it is, but as long as it is something that I can help with then that’s all that matters. For example, if it requires planning and I know that my friends struggle with that kind of thing then I can step in and do something about it.

Sometimes it’s as simple as cooking or baking for them. Maybe it’s just giving them my time, lending them an ear while we play games together. All that matters is helping and taking care of others, because that just grabs me and gets me going.