Tag: blogging

Another day, another story

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What have you been working on?
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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.

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!

The reason I blog

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Why do you blog?
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At the core of it, the main reason I blog hasn’t changed, but how I use it is different.

I blog because I want to write, and this is an easy way to share what I write in a manner that I control while leaving myself open for comments/critiques.

Originally, I had started it because I wanted to share my writing, but I was trying to take outside inspiration through custom requested writing prompts from when I was streaming on Twitch. Unfortunately, I let that fall to the wayside because it was taking a lot of effort out of me to stream, write, work, and have my usual downtime gaming sessions. (I very much still have that list, so I can refer back to it when I need something.) I might go back and pick at those requests someday soon.

Now, I’m writing on my blog using the daily writing prompts as a way to push me towards consistency, which was another issue I had with the original method of streaming/writing. If I can maintain the consistency, and more or less retrain my brain to focus on/prioritize writing then I can make significant progress toward my larger writing goals.

The blog has been very helpful in all of these endeavors because it has allowed me to stretch myself in different ways. Exploring different ideas, trying different styles, and reading others blogs for perspective.

Failed Interviews

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses.
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An important part of any interview is getting permission first. So, technically, all interviews start with the same question.

Me: Can I interview you?

Friend: Not right now.

Me: Okay, thanks.

I asked several people and got roughly similar responses.

Me: Can I interview you for my blog?

Dog: *Stares blankly at me*

Me: *Staring back, politely waiting for a response*

Bit of a tough crowd today.

Me: Can I ask you a few questions?

Neighbor: You still have my mower.

Me: Right, about that…

Okay, so none of these are actually real occurrences, I just couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort to actually interview someone for a DAILY WRITING PROMPT. Personally, seems kind of silly, especially when it’s left so open to interpretation. My mind went in a few different directions for questions I could ask and each direction felt weird. Am I interrogating them? Am I trying to make casual conversation? Would they even be okay with me sharing their responses online?

So, no, I’m not going to interview someone.

Not even yourself?

No, not even myself. Hey, wait! Stop that!

Too late, you’ve already started.

Damnit…

So, how are things going?

THIS is how you choose to start an interview of yourself?

Well?

“Things” are going okay.

Is there anything you’d like to share?

Not particularly.

Sounds like we’ve met the criteria for an interview. Good job.

Alright, I’m done being silly. I hope you all have a great day!

A Personal Tagline

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
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I’ll admit, I had to look up the difference between slogans and taglines. I wanted to be sure I had the right understanding of what was being asked in the prompt.

Sadly, as much as I understand the differences, I don’t have a good answer! Taglines are weird. From what I could read in 20 seconds of googling, taglines are like a weird middle ground between slogans and catchphrases, but lean more towards the latter? I don’t know, maybe I misunderstood.

If I had to have a tagline, and it was my choice of what it said, it would probably be something like “Always Moving Forward”. I’ll just leave it at that.

Life’s sacrifices big and small

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What sacrifices have you made in life?
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Life has a funny way of putting obstacles in our way that we find to be either insurmountable or require a sacrifice, but what if you have convinced yourself that it was life doing this and not yourself? The everyday choices we make can sometimes have unforeseen affects far into our future.

This prompt has me revisiting some of the thoughts I’ve had over the years regarding WHY I’ve made certain choices or remained where I’m at (at that time) in life.

After my family moved to South Dakota, the dynamic of my life changed dramatically. Sure, my family had some horses when I lived in Colorado, but that was a relatively recent change due to my Dad meeting and marrying my Stepmom, but I basically went from a suburban teenager to a “farm kid” practically over night. I couldn’t walk or ride my bike to go hang out with friends who all lived within a half mile radius of my house. I lived multiple country miles away from anyone in my class, and had a roughly eight mile drive just to get to school. I had to pick up daily chores to take care of all of the horses my parents kept “collecting” at the time (really they were mostly rescues or small number related to breeding.) This all adds up to a sacrifice that I had no say in and was forced to make. I don’t really regret having to go through that, because I was able to learn a lot about a completely different way of living and the hardships that some people face out here.

Not long after this time was when I would graduate high school and go on to college. I was fortunate that I lived close enough to the city to attend college while still living at home, so I took advantage of that, but it made it difficult to build meaningful relationships with my peers. That choice meant I sacrificed opportunities for social growth, and I’m lucky I even met the handful of people that I still talk to today.

Leading to college graduation and beyond is where I really look back at my life and think about the sacrifices I convinced myself I had to make. I continued to live at home until about the age of 25. I had a job and “friends” that I invested time into, but I was still stuck at home and helping out on the farm. Eventually, I did make the choice to move out, which meant sacrificing income (I lived at home practically rent free because I had an arrangement with my parents to do chores in exchange) that I had otherwise been funneling into video games and other entertainment. I didn’t move far away, as I still helped with chores on the farm, but the choices in living arrangements and jobs thereafter are where I feel I sacrificed the most. I never strayed far from home, from my family. While my sister moved further and further from home, chasing jobs and dreams (she did eventually move back home), I stagnated. Year after year, new things would come up that impacted my family in ways that I made the same sacrifices to stick around and help them out. I had convinced myself that I was kind of a “shield” for my family. That while my siblings were exploring the different facets of life, such as moving to different states (my sister) or settling down to start a family (like my younger brother) I was making the choice to miss out on those things in case they collectively needed me.

There was a point that I realized I COULD have ventured further afield, so to speak, and done more, but I was using my family as an excuse to not stray from my comfort zone. My own fears and insecurities were (and to a certain extent still are) my biggest obstacles that I keep making sacrifices to accommodate. Do I want to change jobs to try and make more money? Yes. Am I comfortable where I’m at because I’m afraid I won’t succeed? Also yes. In that regard, I have convinced myself in part that my sacrifices are that I’m needed where I’m at, which means I don’t grow professionally. Do I want to own a home? Yes, but the market where I live isn’t great for a single income unless you make more money than I do. Are there places I could go that are more affordable? Absolutely, but that means either sacrificing quality or moving out of state (which also means likely finding a new job.) I also happen to have a financially great living situation with my roommates, and it’s hard to part with that even though I’m also making a mental sacrifice to not having my own space to more deeply explore my hobbies, but I also sometimes use the housing market as an excuse to not leave. (I could totally afford to move into an apartment of my own again, but I’m just being picky about once again sharing walls with strangers.)

Life is full of sacrifices, even if they’re driven by fear and insecurities.

Freedom to live unimpeded

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What does freedom mean to you?
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Change is the only thing in this world and beyond that is a “constant”. The world a hundred years ago was very different from the world we know today, and it will change again. In all of that time the meaning of “freedom” has changed based on the needs of the people, and each time there is such a change we learn something new.

There is one thing that I try to look for when I think about what freedom can mean, not just for myself but for others as well. The bigger picture.

Freedom, to me, means to be able to live unimpeded. To live in ways that we each can be happy and healthy, without being hurt or dominated by others, and vice versa. Idealistic? Sure, but it’s as simple as all that, even if it is a pipe dream under our current world circumstances.

If you don’t vote, don’t complain

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Do you vote in political elections?

I’m not using my blog as a political soapbox. I’m not going to be openly choosing sides or trying to influence anyone to do the same. The only thing I want to encourage people to do is simply vote. I do my best to never miss an election that I’m eligible to vote in. Local, State, Federal, whatever.

Don’t let anyone tell you that your vote doesn’t matter. Don’t let yourself be swayed in any way so as not to exercise your right to vote.

If you’re among those that are already convinced that “my one vote won’t matter” then let me point something out. If you do think this thought, imagine how many thousands upon thousands of other people who think and act the same. You are not just another “drop in the bucket” if all of you vote instead of abstaining.

But if you still choose not to vote, then don’t complain about the results.

When you know your life’s direction

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What gives you direction in life?

To me, knowing your life’s direction means understanding what drives you to action and fulfills you. Having a sense of fulfillment usually leads to some amount of happiness. Unfortunately, I just kind of go with the flow most of the time, no major drive to act, so I never really get a solid sense of fulfillment to know that I’m going the right way with my life.

If I’m in the right place and time, and someone needs help in a way I can help them, then I provide people with my time and effort to make sure they get that help. If I can’t directly help them but know who can then I point them that way and make sure that they connect.

Outside of all of that, I don’t actively seek out opportunities to help.

In retrospect, as I’m writing this post out, I’d say my lack of drive is probably because I’ve never made a connection with helping people in ways that I know I can do continuously. Like some authors who write books and know that their stories have helped readers around the world, which would help drive them to keep writing. The ways I’ve helped are always relatively brief. (Does this make sense?)

Maybe this is part of why I’m pushing through with writing every day.