Author: Taylor Burian

Gamer, writer, occasional streamer

I could make life a little easier

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List down the ways you can make your life easier.

Simply put, a lot of things I could do boil down to the same kind of solution.

Have someone else guide and motivate me through my problems.

At work? To make things easier, I need to educate myself on a system, and all of my searching online isn’t yielding results lately, so I’m asking for outside assistance from someone my company works with currently.

At home or in private? Well, for starters, I could make my life easier if I had a personal trainer, but that costs money. Having that personal trainer would make me obligated to actually stick with something because I wouldn’t want to waste their time (or my money) and I could learn a lot from them outside of just exercise routines. I would need to eat better to fuel the workouts, and they could provide guidance in that department.

I’m sure there are other areas of my life that I could go into detail about, but the solution I’m seeing for them all still seems to be that external source of guidance and motivation.

Maybe next year.

Fluctuating progress

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Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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Everything from the last time I answered this prompt still applies, for the most part.

I’ve stopped buying quite as much Magic: The Gathering cards in the last year or so, so I guess I HAVE made some progress in doing less of something, but all the rest on the list most definitely still apply.

Okay, so maybe I’ve gotten a little better about giving into those feelings of impostor syndrome and self-doubt. Instead, it’s been replaced by allowing myself to be spontaneously distracted. Perhaps I need to speak with my doctor about the change in medication we did a few months ago, because my attention span for things is all over the place. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to maintain my daily writing habit as much as I have since then.

So, there’s an update to my previous answer. I could do less of being spontaneously distracted.

Let’s go with that for now.

Just one thing I love about my country

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What is something you love about your country?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

If there is one thing I love about my country it’s the diversity of cultures that have come together to make this place home.

Especially because of the food.

I love food, and I love the variety of flavors that all those cultures bring.

Simple as that. (I could go on, but I got to writing late today and if I kept going I’d never get done!)

No day could be truly perfect

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Do you think it is possible to have a truly perfect day, with no negative emotions and no negative events?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

Just as I titled my post, I don’t believe it is possible to have a truly perfect day.

Something is bound to go wrong, even in the smallest way possible, and that would automatically disqualify the day from being perfect. That being said, you can still have a really good day, especially if you have a good mental state/approach to everything.

That’s what I believe, and anyways it’s all subjective so it’s not like it matters. Just worry about the things you have control over and make the most of the day.

The multipurpose building of my dreams

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If you could have a 5 story building all to yourself, what would each story be for?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

One thing this prompt doesn’t factor in is the horizontal dimensions of the building, only the vertical. So, I’m going to play with that! I know several buildings in my local downtown that are interconnected, so technically we could take one as an example or just use the full length/width of the downtown city block (minus the alley ways). I think I’d have it be the full length of the city block and only go up to the alley on the width. This would make it roughly 150 feet long from East to West, and roughly 390 feet long North to South. Quite a lot of real estate, especially if it’s five stories!

Personally, I’d start with living quarters. The building is mine to do whatever I want with it, so I might as well live in it. I’d like to have a two- or three-story segment on the south side of the building as my personal space. Maybe 50 feet long, with that longer side facing south, and then 25 feet wide. I could have a massive home in there, with an open concept loft design in part of it. The rest of the third, fourth, and fifth levels throughout the building could be apartments.

Next would be some other form of revenue generation. I’m thinking a bowling alley and arcade could occupy the space beneath my home. I wouldn’t want to subject that kind of noise to the other tenants, so I’d probably make the remainder of the space above it into something other than apartments. Maybe offices? Then I could put restaurants or boutiques/shops on the first two levels beneath the remainder of the apartments.

Okay, so really I just ended up designing my own downtown building that’s very similar to others here. Except the bowling alley. We don’t have one downtown.

Now that I think about it, maybe I’d do a multi-story laser tag arena in part of it? Oh, or maybe multi-story indoor paintball! I’ve always wanted something like that.

I have a bunch of ideas, and now I can’t decide what I would really do with my fictional building.

A potential personality flaw

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Think of a personality flaw you have. Why do you think you have that flaw?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

Sometimes, when I’m having a conversation with people, I feel the need to relate to others in the conversation when they share something that makes them feel insecure or less about themselves in some way. This leads to me sharing a personal experience in hopes that we can connect and they don’t have to feel alone.

Unfortunately, these conversations are usually text-based through services like Discord, and I feel like my responses are often followed by silence from the other person and this makes me feel insecure in a way that says “they feel like you’re trying to one-up them”.

Because of this feeling, I sometimes just don’t share anything anymore and internalize feelings that MAYBE I shouldn’t, because then it starts eating away at me.

A food I like that others do not

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What is a food you like that many people don’t like?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

Honestly, I don’t really know! I can’t recall ever really being in a situation where I discovered that a food a liked is one that many people don’t. I could probably pick out instances of time where I learned that one particular friend disliked something I enjoyed eating.

Specifically, anything flavored vanilla, like ice cream. I have this one friend who thinks that, by itself, vanilla is not a flavor, and so doesn’t like anything that is just plain vanilla. Now, to be clear on my end, I like vanilla ice cream well enough, even if I don’t go out of my way to eat it regularly (because vanilla is boring) but to my friend’s credit, their argument is that vanilla is often used as a base or enhancer for other flavors and therefore isn’t itself a legitimate flavor (so it’s almost kind of like salt in that regard, that’s my interpretation of the situation, at least.)

Collecting that cardboard crack

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Think of something you collect. What is a version of it that you wish to find, or you wish existed? (e.g. I wish I could find my perfect yellow fountain pen ink)

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

The way Wizards of the Coast is pumping out new product for Magic: The Gathering, it’s only a matter of time before they make a card I feel like I absolutely must have, but so far that hasn’t happened. They might hit the mark with the Final Fantasy collab that releases next year, so fingers crossed!

Other than that, I don’t think there is anything else that I’d be too concerned with trying to get.

Give me the meat sweats

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What are your feelings about eating meat?

First off, I don’t intend for this post to offend anyone that is not a meat eater, but simply put, I love meat.

That being said, I’m also very basic about it. Beef? Absolutely, but I don’t go for things like cabeza or lingua. I keep it limited to steaks and ground beef. Same for chicken and pork. No neck or gizzards, nor trotters or anything like that.

I like fish from time to time, as well, but in that realm it’s typically shrimp.

A few years ago there was a local smoked barbecue food truck that opened up a brick and mortar storefront where they offered a lunch buffet. I loved going there once or twice a week and putting myself into a meaty, sweaty food coma. I think they still operate in the food truck style of business but they moved down to Texas and don’t come back this way often. I miss their brisket.

Goals for December 2024

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What are your goals for December?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

I stumbled across this site with some journal prompts that I wanted to explore, but I wanted to start with the appropriate date instead of just grabbing one at random. Unfortunately for me, today’s prompt is related to goals and goal-setting, which I suck at doing for myself.

I’m going to do it anyway.

This December isn’t going to be super productive for me in the writing space. Half the month will be a normal work schedule, so I’ll probably be okay there, but the other half I’m actually taking off of work for a combination of travel and family time. I think somewhere in all of the time I’ll probably try to think a bit further ahead and do some better goal-setting for next year, so I can at least try to accomplish things I keep putting off (or at least the things I keep dragging my feet for because “slow and steady wins the race” means stuff still gets done.)

Also, since we’re talking about goal-setting and how I may not be productive in the near future, fingers crossed I can still push my personal projects over the finish line soon!