Month: October 2024

Hesitant to use AI

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Are you actively trying to learn to use AI to complement your work? Or are you trying to learn more unique skills that cannot be easily replicated by AI?

The regular daily prompt was something about a big risk that I haven’t taken yet, but since I answered that one a while back, I decided to fill in with my own. It did pop up in the back of my mind again, though, when I stumbled upon the one I added above while scouting for a new idea.

First, I’d like to mention that I have already dabbled with AI a bit for different reasons, but I haven’t made the leap to trying to use it for my own benefit. I’ve learned a smidge about how they work, and how they’re being used in different industries, but shelved the idea of leaning on them when what I saw was giving me an icky feeling (at the time).

One of the things I did was mess around with ChatGPT a little to try and see what kinds of information it had access to from Dungeons and Dragons so that I could try to possibly use it as a little Assistant DM (should I ever actually get a group together and play). This was early on in my research for trying to understand the hype, learning a bit about Large Language Models, and I kind of liked how things were turning out. It could pull up all kinds of information on short notice and offer explanations (to the best of its ability) on how certain things worked or where the information was sourced so that I might look into it myself to confirm.

After tinkering with it for a bit I got the idea to see what kinds of ideas it could string together to help me from a creative writing aspect. Then I got cold feet. I put that idea aside for a bit, and went on my way. Not long thereafter was when I stumbled upon an issue that was springing up in the indie-publishing world for fiction authors. Apparently, the market, especially on Kindle, had been getting flooded with stories. What tipped me off were comments and posts on different social media sites and on reddit that all mentioned how they felt similar, and were poorly constructed and almost rushed. People started putting two and two together, and realized that it had to be AI-related. This gave me some serious pause. Several months went by and I saw someone comment about how people were being caught and screened for trying to submit AI built manuscripts to traditional publishers, which caused these reviewers and some editors to start including phrasing concerning these kinds of manuscripts. So, while I didn’t get my hopes up to begin with, it did severely stifle the idea of using AI for creative writing purposes.

At least, until someone pointed out (it was probably Brandon Sanderson, since I listen to a lot of his podcasts and such) that it’s still up to the writer (me) to actually sift through the AI responses and craft things. I don’t HAVE to use exactly what is generated. Which just took me back to my original idea for the D&D stuff. I can use it for ideas, maybe throw in a more developed prompt to see what gets churned out, and then further customize everything (or even throw things out entirely!) So, I may circle back around to trialing it at a later date if I feel like I’m getting stuck. For now, though, I’m still running on my own brain.

One other area I dabbled with AI, actually very recently, was with coding/scripting for work. I didn’t actually use my work device or any sort of sensitive data, so as to avoid risks, but I was stuck trying to figure out a way to make something work in Microsoft Power BI for some reporting I work on. I wanted to try converting DAX scripting into M code to see if it might help improve processing data from a massively customized date table I had constructed. So, I plugged in the idea to a different AI service via my phone, and tried to work with what was given back. Sadly, I couldn’t make it do what I wanted, so it was a bust. I’ve not looked toward AI for work purposes since then, and doubtful I will again since I really should be developing that knowledge and skill set on my own and not relying on AI to do it for me (or else why bother having me do the work at all?)

At this point, all things considered, I still haven’t messed with AI as much as some people, and I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to dabbling with it for creative writing purposes or as a sort of Assistant DM, but I know I’m definitely not intending to use it for work again any time soon.

Venturing outside of the comfort zone a bit

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What is one thing you can do to step outside of your comfort zone today/this week/month/year?

I don’t know about today specifically, but I could tell you that there are a few things I can do to step out of my comfort zone in the future that are highly likely to actually happen, or did already.

Tomorrow (rather than today): go to the gym during a busier time of the day instead of the later part of evenings when there aren’t other people around.

This week: I could go to a local game store event for a card game I play. It’s a public event, and I always feel out of place going to these kinds of events by myself to play against strangers.

This month: I don’t know if I’ll have something good for this one. It’s October and we’re already 2/3rds through the month.

This year: I’ll be flying by myself to an unfamiliar state to meet online friends for the first time in person! I’m actually excited for this one, so even though it’s outside of my comfort zone in multiple ways, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

I’m sure there are other things I could come up with, and maybe I will after I post this, but I’ll keep those for future writing.

Another day, another story

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Daily writing prompt
What have you been working on?
View all responses

The last time I answered this prompt I was working on a different fantasy-themed story (which, I am definitely still working on since I put so much effort into it initially back during NaNoWriMo 2023) but lately I’m also picking at a new one that I want to eventually put up on Wattpad for the fun of it to see what kind response it gets.

I’m also working on more miniature painting and 3D printing stuff. On the miniature side, I’m still slowly working through my back log of minis from the game Black Rose Wars, and I’m also working on assembling the pieces for a box kit of Warhammer 40k: Necromunda that my dad bought because he wanted to play it after seeing some guys playing in a game shop. On the 3D printing side of the hobby house, I’ve been dabbling in Blender again to try and make a box/base that my printed “arborial dragon” can be mounted on. The box is also supposed to house some battery packs and other electronics parts so that I can make the dragon light up, and I’ve made/printed multiple prototypes but something is always off. (Word to the wise for those wanting to get into this stuff, there are all kinds of nuances to the process from designing in Blender to understanding how things will print in a resin-based printer.)

I think those are the main things I’m working on at the moment. Really it’s just more of the same from last time. The fun never ends!

A 2024 preemptive year in review plus looking forward

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What goals did you set for yourself this year? What goals do you have for the next few years and beyond?

Today’s prompt is another amalgamation I created from ones I saw on Sage and Bloom from their post on personal growth and self-improvement.

After I read a couple of similar prompts around goals, I did a little introspection and looking back over the year to see what I’ve accomplished versus what I had planned for. A couple of my goals I won’t reveal specifics but I will give an idea of progress.

Starting a year ago, on about October 15th, I had put up a couple of goals for myself with a target completion date of my 36th birthday in late March. One goal was focused on physical fitness (and I failed spectacularly) while the other was on writing. On the physical fitness side, I was planning to do one of two things at least 4 times a week: go to the gym to work out, or do body weight/resistance bands at home. I think the total count targeted was supposed to be around 120 and I made it maybe a quarter of the time. The writing goal was a little more straightforward. Write every day and hit something like 160 posts for the blog. (If you’ve been following along for the last year, you know that I absolutely CRUSHED that goal!)

Tracking those two goals was easy. I have a small whiteboard in my room where I marked out a grid space for the calendar month and a space above it for reminders and tracking totals. In the grid space I would use a red mark to indicate the fitness activity for the day (just a simple check mark to say I did it) and green for the writing. Then, at the end of each month (or beginning of the new month if I forgot to do it before bed) I would tally up the marks and add them to the running total in the reminder space above. Easy stuff! It felt good to add the marks, but the writing goal was so much easier to manage because I was literally able to do that anywhere at any time because I was using my cellphone and posting from work during breaks or downtime between meetings.

Anyways, those two goals were meant to be short term ones that would help me build a habit and routine. The writing one has worked out great! I went from aiming for less than six months to just keeping up that momentum for over a year now. (I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and do some reflecting on that fitness goal.)

I did have a couple of other writing goals that I put together earlier in the year, and even made a checklist on my phone as a reminder of some “six month strategy” goals but I haven’t made as much progress on them as I would like. One was just a reminder of doing my daily writing prompts, the other two were other writing projects which, although I HAVE worked on, I’m still just in planning and world building. Technically speaking, I still have time in my “six months” but not a lot at this point. Those will likely roll over into the new year.

So, current goals from the past year? Daily writing: crushed. Fitness, writing projects: needs a lot of work.

Goals for the future? Well, I’ve mentioned before in various ways that I struggle with setting goals and sticking with them when they’re focused on myself and I’m only accountable to myself. So, while I might have goals I’d LIKE to achieve in the next 2-5 or 5-10 years, actually getting them across the finish line is a different story. A simple list of those goals is getting some novels written and published, owning my own home, being debt free (outside of the house, most likely) and being self-sustained financially on my writing. Will all that happen? Well, only time will tell.

Looking back at the year so far (we still have about two and a half months to go) I’d say I stand a fair chance at actually accomplishing what I want. I just need to make some changes.

The difference the loss of a parent can make

Taylor Burian2 Comments

What did you wish was different about your childhood? How has that impacted who you are today?

I snagged this prompt from a site called Sage and Bloom on a post about personal growth and self-improvement, and this one in particular grabbed my attention not because it was near the top of the list (though that did help) but because it’s regarding something I don’t often talk about in general.

My biological mother died when I was about twelve years old. She fought a hard battle against cancer, but the medical research and financial costs of cancer care in the late 90’s just wasn’t like it is today.

So, the thing I wish was different about my childhood would be never having lost my mom as a kid. My two older siblings had more time with her, got to know her better, and saw their dreams supported better. I didn’t really get much of that, and my younger brother got even less.

I can for sure say that what I did get from her was my love of video games, particularly FPS and puzzle/room escape types of games. Her favorites, as best I recall, were Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Myst, Riven, Phantasmagoria, 7th Guest, and The 11th Hour.

The games aside, losing her caused me to become a little jaded and spiral through waves of childhood depression. Low effort in school and only wanting to be left alone with games because all I saw was some kind of futility to life.

I look back on the events leading up to her death and I see pieces of how her loss shaped who I’ve become today, but I also see how others were impacted.

My lack of a serious religious upbringing is mostly because my parents never kept a Bible in the house (that I ever knew of) and the fact that we relied on other families/friends to bring us along to church or church-affiliated activities, but nothing was ever really forced on us. Watching my mom struggle through to the end, and the things other people did around her, was what eventually reinforced where I am today in terms of religion and faith. Her best friend (the mom of my best friend at the time) had brought a pastor to pray with her for my mom. I don’t know what was said in her hospital room, I just know that they were in there because I could see them through the glass. Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, I would acknowledge it years later as a defining moment in why I am not religious. No matter how much they prayed, it wouldn’t change anything. My full belief as an adult is much more nuanced, shaped by a myriad of other things that I’ve seen or experienced thus far in my life, but I’ll leave that for other posts (should I get around to them.)

Another impact of her loss was how my relationship with my family changed.

Dad was always busy, working harder and harder to make sure he could provide for us, but after losing my mom he was also looking for a partner to help support him and vice versa.

My sister was always on the go and doing things but because of my childhood depression in middle school she was at one point roped into trying to help me in a therapy-like way despite the fact that she herself was still only in high school.

A lot of responsibilities fell to my older brother to support my younger brother and I. He had dropped out of college (although that was most likely for different reasons than just simply taking care of us) and was driving my younger brother and I to and from school, taking us grocery shopping, and ultimately spiraling into alcoholism fueled by his own depression. The events that would eventually lead up to all of our family living in South Dakota include some things that involve my older brother and his alcoholism, which shaped how I view alcohol (and a big reason I don’t drink.) Had our mom still been alive I’m sure things would have gone very differently for him as well.

As far as my younger brother goes, I can’t for sure say what affects came from losing our mom. Like I mentioned earlier, he knew her the least. I’m sure that our dad remarrying had a strong impact, but I can’t tell how it relates to the rest.

I’m sure I’m probably missing other things, things I just didn’t see or maybe things I repressed, but I’ll leave it there for today. Life would be majorly different if Mom were still here with us.

Accomplishments at different stages of growing up, and doing things out of order

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Yet another day where I have to come up with my own writing prompt because I’ve already answered the one provided! That’s okay, though, because that means I have to challenge myself with a little extra thinking about what I want to talk about.

As I was googling for writing prompts I stumbled on an image list with examples that gave me an idea. There were two in particular, not next to each other in the list but still related, that I thought might be fun to combine.

“What are five things you would like to do before you are 20 years old?” combined with “What do you think your life will be like when you are 30 years old?“

I’ve answered similar prompts before but I think I’ll twist it up a bit.

Did you get to do the things you wanted to do by the time you were 20? 25? 30? Etc.

The simple answer is no. There are tons of things that I wished I had done by various points in my life, but also so many of those things I feel like I learned about at the wrong time.

By the time I was 20 I was hoping to have moved out and started what used to be the stereotypical “college experience” of living on campus, meeting people and making friends that might become roommates when you’re no longer living in the dorms. Things like that.

I was still living and working at home (on the farm) until I was about 24. I moved out that year, living with friends for about five or six months, but was still working at home briefly until I finally landed an office job through my brothers. Ultimately, this period of my life, up through 25, felt like I was behind to a certain degree. I watched friends from college doing, more or less, the things I had hoped to be doing. Living in an apartment, working, doing fun things once in a while like occasionally going to the bars (drinking out is expensive, so not too often) or traveling for a short vacation. I did one thing, sort of, before 26, that was something I had hoped to do and that was go back to my home state (Colorado) of my own accord and on my own dollar. It was a short weekend vacation that I took to visit a friend (who moved there from South Dakota, where I met them and we went to college together) for their birthday. So, not all was “lost” in that regard.

Age 26 through 30 went much better, all things considered. I hadn’t expected to start this period of my life needing a major surgery and not having health insurance, followed by losing my job because the company didn’t renew our contracts, but that all happened, and helped spring me towards the direction of accomplishing some of those earlier things out of order.

Somewhere between 24 and 25 I had moved into my own apartment, by myself, but because of the cost of the surgery and insurance complications I had soon opted to move in with a friend from college that I had reconnected with the prior year. So, surgical debt, lost a job and started new one shortly after, which led to moving in with friends to help cut costs all around. Some of this happened only five years out of order from expectations, but hey, it happened eventually!

More things happened in that time before 30 that were closer to when I had hoped to experience them. Temporary gig work which helped get me into my current job, which is stable and has been a very good place to be long term. Making enough money to fund hobbies and enjoy new things, make new friends (which gets harder the older you get) and take brief staycations to play games or spend time with family. Still, all that aside, I didn’t meet anyone that I vibed with enough to start a solid romantic relationship with and explore the idea of starting a family. Another missed target.

From 31 until now, since I’m not sure what “accomplishments or experiences” I should be cutting off at 35, I have had some nice things happen. Still working the same job, still living with the same friend, learning new skills, making plenty of money for those hobbies AND I actually took a real vacation. Unfortunately, still no romantic prospects for me, but glad I’ve been able to watch other friends grow closer together and get married or start families.

So, while I’m not living the original stereotypical “American Dream”, I’m still slowly experiencing things that I hope for, just not always in the expected order. Looking at things from that angle, and then comparing my life to others, I am seeing the same thing for many others and accepting that my lived experience will be my own and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as others.

My biggest regret so far

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So, the daily writing prompt I received today was one I had previously answered. I didn’t want to use it again, and since this seems to be happening more frequently, I instead went searching for a list of prompts that I could pull from when this happens.

I found a list that will provide a new prompt each day for a year, and they’re listed by date so I can follow them in relatively close order as needed. Todays is below.

Explain your biggest regret – as though to a child.

Before I dive into the “explaining to a child” part, I want to provide a little context.

Socially, I can be a fair bit awkward. Less so as I’ve gotten older, but still awkward. I attribute this to the way society has developed over the course of the last hundred years or so, and the way that people are conditioned to exhibit and understand social cues. This is particularly important when it comes to romantic attraction, as that’s what I want to explain today.

As much as this may be therapeutic for me, I don’t want to mistake writing this out as a perfect alternative to actually speaking to a therapist (which I don’t have one but maybe should get one).

Explaining this might be hard but I’m going to give it a shot anyways, so enough stalling. On to the explanation.

You know when you meet someone, and become friends? Sometimes you eventually end up liking them a whole lot, but you’re afraid to tell them?

Why would you be afraid to tell them?

Well, you might be afraid that they’re not going to feel the same way back, and that maybe they’ll stop talking to you.

Why would they stop talking to you?

Maybe because they start thinking you aren’t who they thought you were? That what you really wanted all along is something different than they thought you wanted? And they don’t want things to change. They like exactly what you have right now, but they think that’s gone.

Why does that matter?

Because my biggest regret is never taking the chance to be honest about how I feel, about how much I really did like them and they stopped talking to me eventually anyway.

But why did they stop talking to you anyway?

That part is a bit harder to explain. Maybe I didn’t give them a reason to still talk to me as much and they started talking to other people more. They might have gone somewhere else that I chose not to go to, or that I couldn’t go.

Well, if they stopped talking to you anyway, then do you think it would have mattered anyway if you had told them you liked them?

It would definitely matter. Why? Because never taking that chance to open up meant never learning how to properly express how I feel about those people that I really like.

What do you mean?

Everybody is going to live different lives, see and do different things, and that means they’re going to experience different things. Including how they want to talk to other people, or how they want other people to talk to them.

I don’t think I get it.

That’s alright, it’s something you’ll learn if you keep talking to people and listening to them. And I really do mean it, listen to them and try to understand what matters to them. Don’t be afraid to tell people how you feel so that you can learn how they feel in return. Don’t be afraid of that chance that they might stop talking to you just because you don’t want them to.

Not sure if I explained that well enough for a child to understand, but I think I did my best.

I don’t resent myself or the other people in the few times I have opened up and been shot down, but in retrospect I do see things I could have either done better or acknowledged that I might have been seeing things through rose tinted glasses, which all added up to me opening up less often/take fewer chances to meet people I might have been romantically attracted to.

Another potential first time

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What could you try for the first time?

The last time I answered this prompt I talked about skydiving. Well, I still haven’t tried it, but it’s still on my list.

I think this time I’ll throw out rock climbing.

I’m not particularly interested in rock climbing, not the way I am about skydiving (one is, technically, much easier than the other) but I still would like to try it.

I’ve seen plenty of posts on social media of people doing indoor climbing, and I learned that they now have a sort of “treadmill” device where someone can essentially rock climb as much as they want without leaving the safety of five feet off the ground. I think, if I got the chance, I would very much like to try climbing on that device.

My defining principles

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What principles define how you live?

I’m going to keep things a bit simpler here and link back to a post I made back in May. In that post I talk about some words I live by.

The particular one I want to bring back up is my sort of “modified” Golden Rule.

Do unto others as you would have done unto you if you were acting the way they are towards you.

Bit of a mouthful and doesn’t really roll off the tongue, but I like it. It makes you think.

The reason I choose to live by this modified rule is as a safety measure of sorts for self-respect and self-esteem.

Kindness begets kindness, hate begets hate, things like that are part of the basics of the Golden Rule, but why should you show kindness to someone who is so clearly not going to reciprocate that kindness? If all I ever did was walk around being kind to people, then I’m likely to get manipulated and walked all over. So, instead, taking the Golden Rule a level deeper, I would treat them with the due respect I would like to receive should I be caught acting the way they are at that time.

If someone is acting like a complete asshole, I’m not going to just play nice and show them kindness, but I’m not going to be a complete asshole in return. I’ll be relatively polite but direct them away from myself without escalating the situation so that they don’t drag me down to their level because if I were in their shoes that’s how I would hope others treat me in return.

If someone is in need of help, I’d still help them to the best of my abilities, because I know that if I were in their position then I would probably want help as well. Provided that they don’t take advantage of the help and turn into a never ending problem of needing help. Then I’d do my best to help them get stable and make sure they’re able to take care of themselves beyond that situation, to be self-sufficient, because that’s what I would like to see happen for myself.

It should be that simple all the time. That’s what I believe and that’s how I try to live my life.

A year of progress since October 2023

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Since it seems like today’s daily writing prompt is another repeat, I’ll go into something else I was thinking about recently.

Today should be, I believe, the 362nd day in a row that I’ll have posted something to the blog. Given that I’m closing in on a 1-year streak, I decided to look into some stats. How many words have I written? How many posts? How does it compare to writing a full length novel in the same time frame?

Well, WordPress collects some of these things, but not in the way that I needed. So I decided to do some extra leg work today and check the word counts of all of my posts since October 16th, 2023 when I first started down this path of trying to write every single day. I’ll also be incorporating some numbers for last November’s NaNoWriMo, as proof of effort.

According to my calculations (I used Excel to help track all of this):

  • 371 individual posts written
  • 111,245 words just for the blog
    • 151,143 words when including NaNoWriMo 2023
  • 299.85 average words per post
  • 2,925 words in the longest post (although admittedly that was copying what I wrote for a writing contest)
    • 1,230 words in the longest post that DIDN’T include the writing contest results

That’s all I think I’m going to share, which is basically everything I was concerned with at this time (although, I totally did consider making some graphs.)

The key takeaway I want to point out, for myself as well as others who might be thinking of writing a full length novel (or two or three) is that even if you can only get down 300 words per day during some spare time, if you write every single day then you can definitely make it in a year and have the potential wiggle room for editing to bring total word count down to a reasonable level. Aim for that 100,000 word mark at just a few hundred words per day and you’re golden.

Good luck out there fellow writers!