When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
This one’s hard for me to decide on. There are several different things that have happened that required me to make an important decision alone that would affect my future.
One that comes to mind was signing paperwork for college, as that dramatically shaped my future, but I was supported by family and friends in different ways when it came to the decision-making process. However, there is something that left a stronger impression on me as a “grown up” decision/event.
It was when I moved into my first apartment.
Up until I was about 25 or 26, I had lived with family or friends. It was easy, convenient, and we all benefited. The thing was, I didn’t have to worry about being in control of utilities, mortgage payments, or anything of the sort. I just paid in cash, bought groceries, or helped with things around the house (or the farm, when I was still living with my parents.)
So, when I first moved out on my own, that’s when things felt drastically different and more grown up. I was living by myself, no roommates, and I was solely responsible for making sure rent was paid on time and that my other bills/accounts were managed appropriately.
I had to be strong enough on my own to do these things on my own, that’s what I felt at the time, and that to me was what it really felt like being a grown up.
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
The simplest answer would be that I’d donate it to charity. Specifically, I’d donate it to one of the places in town that helps the homeless and displaced. It’s not that we have a particularly bad issue of that kind here, it’s just that they’re always in need and most of the time just getting by.
That’s all there is to it. Let them decide how to use the funds.
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
I think I’d like to do something a little silly with this prompt. A guaranteed unfailable attempt? I could say just about anything.
I could say I want to attempt to bowl a perfect 300 game, or make the world’s most perfect pastry. What if I said I wanted to attempt to discover the most efficient and stable source of near limitless clean energy and make it easy for anyone to produce so that greedy power companies can’t control it?
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
I don’t set a lot of personal goals. For me they have a tendency to feel imposing and put a lot of pressure on me mentally. I mainly just focus on the idea of something being a normal, consistent part of my life so as to avoid all of that. That doesn’t mean I haven’t set any recently.
Two personal goals that are tied together that I set recently were participating in NaNoWriMo last year and trying to write on my blog every day for a few months.
I didn’t meet the word count for NaNo, but still made significant progress, and considering I was simultaneously working on my blog every day, I technically wrote a lot more. Combined, I still didn’t hit the word count goal, but that isn’t what is important. I learned a lot about how I approach writing stories versus my blog, and although I haven’t made significant progress on my stories since then, I haven’t stopped writing. I’m still picking away at the ideas from NaNoWriMo, building new ideas and running into new stories that I want to write, all while still doing these daily prompts.
I may have failed at hitting 50,000 words in one month (it really is challenging!) but I haven’t fully given up. NaNoWriMo is coming up quickly again, and I might see if I can do it this time. Even if I don’t, I do know that, at the very least, I’ve managed to hit an unspoken long term goal for my blog. Next week, October 14th, should be the one year mark of writing daily. With that in mind, it seems even more likely that I could succeed at 50,000 words for NaNo.
Rather than go on a great long tangent about multiple artists that I would consider favorites, I’ll just stick with one because I find their style fun and unique.
If old-school/retro pixel style art is something you enjoy, then I highly recommend checking out Luiza Niechoda.
While not strictly “pixels”, the idea is there. Per their About page:
“Now my work is a mix of sharp lines and haziness, balancing between realism and hard-edged geometric abstraction. There is no digital process involved. Everything is made with paint, on canvas.”
For starters, green is my favorite color, and most of their works are in shades of green or accented with greens. Aside from that, what really draws me to their work is how a lot of it looks like you’re observing a pixelized world made real, or through some kind of magical pixel portal into a different reality. It’s like a combination of my love for digital media (video games) and science fiction/fantasy. The edges of reality, instead of going fuzzy and blurring, are made of hard edged lines that overlap in a way that might look almost like a whicker basket, but because of the colors it comes across like pixels. It’s almost mesmerizing!
I’ve purchased a print copy of one of their pieces, but someday I hope to be able to acquire an original piece. Although, I’d like to have a home to put it in first.
I want to throw out some clarifying information before diving into why I love video games. There’s a lot to be said about video games, and there’s always some kind of negative social commentary surrounding them, but those detractors are either isolated incidents with little supporting evidence or the issue is actually a symptom of something deeper.
What am I talking about? Well, lately, on social media (particularly Threads, for some reason) there’s this weird attention grabbing push from people who are asking questions like “Ladies, what’s a red flag/deal breaker for guys?” A lot of people are throwing video games under the bus here, and they’re saying things like “they’re a waste of time” or “they’re spending more time with games than with me/helping around the home” and things of that nature. (Ladies, I hate to break it to you, that’s an issue with the guy and his priorities, not the games.)
Video games have come so far from just being shapes on a screen. The stories and narratives. The interactivity and puzzles. It’s absolutely incredible! In many ways it’s better than just reading a book (I do love books, don’t come at me) or watching a TV show. There’s even a potential social aspect of them. Conventions, for in person stuff, or just online gaming in general. I know several people who met their spouses through online gaming.
The reason I love video games as a hobby is because in the same way I can get lost in a good book, I can get into the deep lore and narrative of a game. I can see someone else’s vision made manifest in a way that would be otherwise impossible, and further still I can take creative inspiration from them through this medium. (I know some people say video games aren’t art, and to you I say fuck off. The defining characteristics of “art” have changed over the centuries.)
So, excuse my rambling, but that’s I’ll leave you all with for today’s prompt. I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday!
Okay, don’t panic at reading the title of the post, I’m admittedly just being a shit attention grabber for today’s post.
However, it’s not entirely just for grabbing your attention. It’s honestly how I would ultimately feel if the prompt came true. Over the years, I’ve become a silver linings kind of person, and so I’m trying to approach this the same way.
What WOULD I do if I lost all of my possessions? Well, for starters, I guess it would depend on the circumstances. Did I somehow land myself in prison? I guess I wouldn’t be able to do much about anything at that point. Instead, I’m thinking that maybe everything burned up in a house fire (thinking of the unfortunate people and families affected by the wildfires here in North America) or maybe in a flood or hurricane situation (like those impacted by Hurricane Helene). They’re all being forced to face this exact situation.
Personally, I know for a fact that I would be rather depressed at first. I’d feel a little lost in the moment and during the immediate aftermath, but I know that eventually once I got myself situated I would be fine. Those first few weeks/months (and maybe even a year or two) are going to be tough.
Back to the hypothetical situation for myself, though, and my silver linings approach. If I did happen to lose all of my possessions, I would eventually look at it as a fresh start. I’d take stock of everything I had lost. I’d make a list to prioritize the most important things first. A home, a vehicle (sorry motorcycle, you’re a leisure item, so it’s the car), furniture and appliances, things like that. I think after I’d gotten my foundation re-established then I could start looking into the hobby stuff again. The computer would top that part of the list, but it would be a part of the appliances section as well because I would need to see if I can retrieve important documents and use it for work. From there would be things like my collection of Magic: The Gathering cards (which I think I would just write-off as a loss and move on for a while.) The hobby stuff could be picked up slowly again. Maybe invest in something new instead.
Granted, this would all take a lot of time and patience to get back into, and it’s entirely possible that I never get back to where I was mentally prior to losing everything, but this would be where I would go if I was trying to look at this as a “fresh start” kind of silver lining. Life keeps moving, and so would I.
What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?
I don’t want to start off by giving the wrong impression when I say something along the lines of “I’ve never changed my mind.” What I really want to call out is that I’ve never seen myself as, nor acted like I was, an absolute authority on a topic or issue only to be corrected later and have changed my mind. I might approach a situation with a measure of certainty, but I always leave myself open for constructive criticisms and conversations because I recognize that I might be working with incomplete information, and the only way to improve myself and my knowledge is to adapt and learn.
So, rather than answer the question relating to an external topic or issue, I’m going to focus on something internal to myself.
For a long while in my early to mid 20’s I thought I was good at a certain type of video game, First Person Shooters. I played a lot of Halo: Reach on the Xbox, and eventually switched to PUBG when I learned about the burgeoning genre of Battle Royale games. I knew for a fact there were always better players in the world, I had friends that would regularly stomp me in these games (not without a fight, though) so it wasn’t always surprising when I’d lose. That didn’t stop me from pinning my lackluster performance on strangers on the Internet by claiming they were cheating at these games, because that was still a rampant issue even back then.
At some point, though, I did eventually change my mind about something in this area. Not that people weren’t cheating and were just flat out better. Not that the developers had faulty matchmaking algorithms. Nothing like that.
What I did was change my mind on how much I staked my own internal self-worth on my skill at these games. I stopped treating it all like it was a big deal, because in the grand scheme of things in life, it’s not.
I changed my mind about this silly internal struggle with myself that I could do better at something that really shouldn’t be aggravating me, that I should be having fun and enjoying myself. The restraints were gone and this allowed me to explore new genres of games without feeling stuck playing the same one game over and over. I found new friends, new interests, new perspectives, and new hobbies. I was learning and growing as a person again.
A long time ago, in a city somewhat far from where I live today, sits a rather unassuming building. There are a couple of other buildings around it that look similar in every way, but this one particular building, sitting in the middle of all of them, held a secret.
The city, who originally owned and used the building, had outgrown it and moved everyone inside to bigger, newer offices in another part of its municipal territory. It sat empty for a while, until a group of teenagers from the local high school reached out to get permission to borrow some of its space. This group of teenagers included my sister, and their need for the space was storage of costumes and set pieces for their independent summer theater program. So, with the city’s blessing, they borrowed space on one of the upper floors.
I was still a kid, maybe 13 years old at this point, and had just started to be on the fringe of this theater group by following my sister around and learning a few things about production. Our Mom passed away about a year before, and so most of the time we had also brought my younger brother along to this building.
Being kids, it wasn’t particularly fun or interesting (at the time) for my brother and I to be around this group of teenagers who we didn’t know and basically had nothing in common with. This eventually got better the more time we spent around them, or at least for it did, as I can’t speak for my brother on this one.
We were only using a couple rooms on the top floor just off the western stairwell, and we visited this old office building a couple of times throughout the summer, each time feeling a little different than before. It started off being eerily quiet. It felt weird to be in there, in rooms that used to be full of the hustle and bustle of people working. The vibe of the building, empty except for a couple of teenagers, and two kids, working on theater costumes and props really felt bizarre. It didn’t dawn on me until the second visit that part of what made things feel so still in there was the lack of air conditioning. The city wasn’t actively using it, so of course they weren’t going to be running the A/C. I’m sure my sister and her friends were just glad they had electricity for the lights. The stifling summer heat contributed to the awkward stillness inside, making me feel more out of place than I already had been. Looking back on it now, it almost felt like visiting some abandoned building that people claimed was haunted.
But it wasn’t just all of this, the strangers and the empty building, that made me feel out of place. The vast majority of people in the city had no idea what was going on in this building, but I’m sure most of them (at least the adults, anyway) knew the history of it, and what else was in there.
On one of the last trips I made with my sister to the building, I had asked if I could go explore since I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance. She said no, because she didn’t want us messing with anything that might get the city mad at them, but her friend made a comment that caught me by surprise.
“We also don’t want you wandering into one of the jail cells and accidentally locking yourself in, because we don’t have the keys for those.”
Several trips to this building, and this was the first time I had heard any mention of jail cells in the building. It was then that I learned this wasn’t just some random municipal office building, and to prove it they took my brother and I down to the lower levels. It was warmer and stuffier down there, and they didn’t turn on the lights on the floor, only letting us see in a little ways with the sunlight that came in through the stairwell. They opened the door to let us peek inside, and when we looked down the hallway we could see the bars along one side.
I’m glad we didn’t go back after that, not because the existence of the jail cells made it seem haunted and foreboding, but because the whole building contributed to making me feel like I didn’t belong there. Thinking back on this now, that feeling was also rather thrilling.
Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
Just looking at my life and not considering the possibility that nobody has a computer, but only if I didn’t, I think things would be very quiet.
I’m also figuring in the idea that smartphones are computers as well, and I think about the idea of going back to a “dumb phone”. Only being able to make calls and basic texts. No picture messages, no fancy ringtones.
The world would seem much smaller. Life would seem quieter. Hobbies would be limited to things that don’t require the internet. Television programming would be limited to free channels or good old fashioned cable packages for news and entertainment. I’d have to go to the movie theater to watch new stuff, and buy the ones I like on DVD or Blu-ray.
In a weird sense, life would be simpler. It would feel a lot more like it did growing up in the 90’s.
The Dragon's Grove 