Honestly, I haven’t yet thought too much about my evening plans. My usual plans might include a post-work nap.
I do have to finish a 3D print I started, but I should actually be able to run home at lunch and get that mostly squared away before tonight. (I’m hoping it turns out okay and I can finally assemble and paint it. I’ll share a post about it later.)
I have some cleaning to do, some laundry to catch up on, and a new game to play, but I also need to catch up on some reading. Plenty of things to do tonight! Just a matter of what I feel like prioritizing when I get there.
What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?
Unfortunately, there isn’t just one personality trait that trips the red flag alert with me, however, one of the biggest ones for me is deflecting in order to dodge accountability.
For anyone who doesn’t understand what I mean, I’ll explain what that looks like. Buckle up, because this is about to get long. (And I’m keeping things vague on purpose because it’s not entirely my story, but a friends. I can only really share my perspective.)
Someone you know, a friend, fucks up. They admit it to you, but don’t elaborate too much, and talk about trying to do better. They ask for advice, you kindly work with them to develop a loose plan so they have some direction, and off they go. They ARE your friend, after all. Simultaneously, you are talking with the friend who was hurt, who is also withholding information but telling you they don’t mind if you and mutual friends still talk to the friend who fucked up, because they don’t want to cause problems or reciprocate the hurt in some way.
Several months later, you learn some new information from a third party regarding what happened, but you take it with a bit of skepticism because this third party may have been part of the problem. They admit that, in part, they were involved in some situations where your friend was acting suspiciously, to the degree where this third party was your friends focus, but they don’t do anything about it nor make any mention of trying to put off your friend from whatever it is that was going on. They just keep talking about your friend and the things they had seen them do.
So, the red flag has been tripped by the third party about themselves, but you’re still skeptical and willing to give your friend the benefit of the doubt because they’re trying to do better and following the plan you worked out with them.
Given this new development, though, you’re being cautious with your friend. They never did tell you the full story. Until they do, a few more months later.
So, half a year or more has gone by, and your friend finally admits what really happened. They fucked up, but not in the way you thought. They did something that hurt another person, mentally and emotionally, but they don’t see what they did as wrong because in their mind it isn’t the same as what other people do.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there, because you learn it isn’t the first time this has happened. They hurt this same person in the same way multiple times, and claim that the victim (who they are trying to work with and reconcile with) can’t get passed the first time which means they can’t even begin to address the other times, and blames that on the victim.
Now THAT is fucked up!
The sheer disrespect after having previously talked it out and (presumably) working through it the first time, only for it to happen again and again because “they don’t see that they did anything wrong”. The abuser, because that’s what they have now become in your mind, is trying to dodge accountability for their further transgressions towards their victim because the victim is having trouble coming to terms with the first time? That’s not how it works at all. They don’t get to magically render the other times as null and void when what they have effectively done is reset all the work the victim had put in (because obviously to you at this point, the abuser doesn’t appear to have tried at all) and shift the blame.
So, after these new revelations, you quietly simmer. You don’t let the abuser know that you’re pissed. Not yet. They’ve triggered the same red flag as the third party (and so many more.)
You talk things out with some mutual friends, and collectively help and support the victim as you have been on the side this whole time. You realize that all of you had been slowly distancing yourself from the abuser while maintaining daily contact with the victim. Then the day comes where the victim finally opens up and shares their side of everything that transpired.
Now, you and your mutual friends have been respecting the victims wish to continue talking with and helping the abuser (under the pretense that they were actually trying to turn things around) but the day has come to set the record straight and make sure everyone is on the same page. You share what you learned from the third party.
All that information you had been keeping to yourself because of your skepticism and not wanting to unnecessarily stir the pot while people are trying to (presumably) work on themselves for the better? It all comes out. Details are confirmed and corroborated. One of your mutual friends now feels weird about the situation because the abuser had recently reached out to see how they were doing. They hadn’t responded yet, and, now knowing all this, they don’t want to.
You and another mutual friend take it upon yourselves to prepare some confrontational statements (relating solely to how the situation is between you all and the abuser, and not as a way of attacking them on behalf of the victim). You call the abuser out, pointing to the fact that their “progress” isn’t what they had been making it out to be. That they had been lacking in accountability for certain things that they had promised you they were working on, dodging and shifting blame for those things.
Instead of coming clean, they give a rather lengthy, but hollow, apology and then run away.
Technically, the story doesn’t end there. The victim still has things to finish dealing with in regards to their connection with the abuser, but you all are there to help.
As you look back upon the whole situation, and look further back through the years you had known the abuser, you start to see the signs that you should have taken more seriously. The red flags. Complaining about how much effort things take and then shifting attention away from themselves. Giving half hearted attempts to do things that would progress their livelihood to a higher level, and then giving up and blaming something else.
Hopefully, for the future, you can catch these signs as they happen. They may not always be associated to mental and emotional abuse of another friend, but they’re something to keep an eye out for.
Days would be 28 hours long, and I would only work four days a week while still putting in the usual 40 hours of work. I would still work 8am to 5pm, but with the extra four hours in the day it would mean that clocks would go to 14 instead of 12 so that the extra two hours needed to fulfill the four ten-hour work days would be accounted for.
I would be able to sleep a perfect eight hours every night. I would sleep from 13 o’clock in the evening until 7 o’clock in the morning. Combined with my work schedule, this would mean I would have eight hours after work to get things done or have fun. Thursday nights would be game night with my Magic group, and instead of only getting a few hours to play we would get up to five or six.
Working Monday through Thursday for a four day work week would mean I have all day Friday to do whatever I wanted. I could probably pick up streaming again for about six hours on Fridays and then maybe three to four hours a couple nights during the week. I would also spend extra time writing and reading on Friday’s.
Saturday’s and Sunday’s would still be relatively similar to what they are now. Family time, grocery shopping, cleaning and doing laundry, maybe even some meal prepping.
Also, with the added time in the evenings, it would be easier to make a consistent schedule for going to the gym.
Any post-work hours I don’t have specific ideas for how to fill in can be flexible and used to play games or work on more writing. Probably more writing, so I can actually get stuff done.
Well, that’s how I would do it, and although it’s not possible, I can still dream.
Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.
The short answer: I can’t name any.
The slightly longer answer: I don’t really care about any pro sports, so I don’t pay attention to teams or individual players. I’ve heard some names in the news, but I don’t recall almost anything about them. It’s hard to have respect for someone you don’t know. Are they good or bad people off the field/court? No idea.
That being said, it’s not like I actively dislike or show disrespect towards any pro athletes either.
It’s really quite simple. Anything that I do that allows me to immerse myself into it and forget the things that have been stressing me out are things that help me relax.
Video games, reading/writing, painting miniatures while listening to music or podcasts (lately it has been Legends of Avantris and their Once Upon A Witchlight campaign on YouTube) and of course sleeping.
Each of these activities takes my focus away from the stressors of life and gives me a good distraction so that I can relax, often in an almost pseudo-meditative state of mind.
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
I don’t know how to answer this prompt. I think this is the toughest question yet!
As far as I can tell, there are no words I use regularly that I could even fathom giving up, and I say this because I do give up words from time to time.
Alright, I suppose if I want to humor the question and not take it too seriously, I could just say I give up the word “fuck” because it might encourage me to find other words to scream when I stub my toe or smack the ever loving shit out of my shin.
Some time in the last five years or so I reached a point where I came to terms with the idea of “letting someone live in your head rent free” and how it’s just not worth the energy to dwell on those kinds of things.
People may have wronged me in the past, but I’m not going to go out of my way to get back at them, and I’m certainly not going to let them do anything similar to me again. However, I’ve set myself up so that they don’t have those opportunities by simply keeping them at a distance or cutting them out (if it was serious enough) and moving on.
In my mind, whether in whole or in part, “Forgive and Forget” doesn’t always apply, and for those times where you know you won’t forget what happened, forgiveness can be optional. This is part of where I’ve come to terms with the previous idea. I don’t HAVE to forgive, but I also don’t need to expend extra energy (mentally and physically) to maintain a grudge if I know not to repeat the same mistake or let someone wrong me again because I didn’t “forget” what happened.
I have more important things to spend my energy and mental bandwidth on than a grudge.
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
For today’s prompt I had to do some double checking on relative distances from my childhood home versus my current home.
It turns out that the furthest I had been from home was from Colorado to Florida, which would be about 1,500 miles by air.
To this day, it is the only time I’ve been to Florida. My family liked to use the Christmas holiday to travel and spend time with extended family. Usually this was time spent with my Mom’s side of the family because my Dad is an only child. However, one Christmas was spent visiting my paternal grandparents in Florida.
The first few days or so we spent in a hotel and doing some sightseeing. Among all the places we visited were Disney World and Universal Studios, of course. The latter part of the vacation we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa so we could have Christmas dinner together and open gifts.
That trip would have been about 25 years ago, and the world has changed so much since then. Personally, I don’t know that I would go back. There are other places in the country, and the world, to visit if I have the chance.
My ideal home looks like any damn home that I can move into without significant work or extra costs upfront, while still being affordable in today’s stupid housing market.
That aside, I don’t know. I’ve seen so many homes online and liked different things about most of them that it’s hard to decide which things I liked most and how they would even fit together.
Starting from the outside, I’d love to have a big yard (both front and back) with a good amount of barrier trees around the edges and decent shade trees. Out here in South Dakota the wind gets nasty sometimes, and having barrier trees is especially important in winter when the snow is just blowing across the Great Plains. I’d also love it if there was some kind of lake front view from the back of the house, but that’s not a deal breaker. As for part of the exterior of the house, the back needs a covered patio of some kind, and it would be amazing if you could shut it up or screen it in (I recently saw something like this in some million dollar home in Colorado.) If the garage were detached I would want it to be large enough for some kind of workshop space.
Inside the house there would be only a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms. I would use one for an office space or maybe a hobby space depending on how the rest of the house turns out. If possible, that office space could also be lined with bookshelves and made into a little library. Also, have you seen those clips online of people building secret doors in their bookshelves? Definitely would want something like that, which could lead into a separate living room/entertainment space.
I shouldn’t forget to talk about the kitchen. Ideally, it would be spacious so that I can actually work in it when I’m trying to roll out pizza dough or something, and it needs a proper exhaust hood over the stove.
Okay, so a lot of the features I want are definitely a bit much, but some of them are more doable than others. Provided I find a basic home with enough space, I could probably add in the things I want myself and up the home value later. It’s just fun to think about this stuff sometimes.
Have you ever told a funny story, or cracked a really well timed joke, and everyone thought it was so funny that it just fills everyone with an infectious laughter? The kind of laughing that just doesn’t stop and leads to people crying because they’re laughing so hard?
Well, that’s generally what brings tears of joy to my eyes.
The Dragon's Grove 