Tag: daily writing

Strong bonds of friendship

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

How did you bond with one of the best friends you’ve ever had?

“500 Journal Prompts” by Robert Duff

I found this prompt via a reddit post, and this one caught my attention as I glanced over the first dozen or so. The following post is actually going to cover two people who are basically from the same source.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned how I landed in my current situation, but it started back in college about 2009 or 2010. My dad, who worked at the technical university I ended up going to, mentioned that one of his colleagues had a daughter about my age that was also attending classes there, and that maybe I’d run into her in a shared class. I’ll admit, at first I had mixed feelings about this possibility. I hadn’t made a great many friends while attending classes because of the huge age range of the students (anywhere from 18 to 65) and the fact that this university didn’t have campus housing because all the programs were designed around working adults trying to get a degree to basically change careers. So, this potential new friend was an exciting opportunity to meet someone more my age that I might actually be able to commiserate with because we had something in common (both our dad’s working together) but at the same time I couldn’t help but have a sneaking suspicion that my dad might be trying to set me up with her. Regardless, we did end up having a class together.

Unfortunately, that class was Computer Assisted Statistics. I wasn’t great with Statistics to begin with, but something that made it worse was the teacher. It turned out that my dad’s colleague, this young lady’s dad, was our teacher. Before I get too far, he is a super nice guy! There weren’t any issues with him as a person or him potentially targeting me for sitting next to his daughter. Rather, the issue that a great many of us had was in his ability to teach the material at the time. Even his daughter struggled to learn from him, and several of us did fairly poorly in the class. This didn’t go unnoticed by the administration, in part because of how many of us went and complained to student advisors. So, we got a free pass to take the class again, and we forged a new friendship through awkward adversity.

So, this first time of taking the class is where I met one of the two people who would later go on to becoming one of my best friends. The second time we took the class is where I met the other person.

When it came time to retake the class, I ended up meeting this young lady’s boyfriend at the time. This guy was fairly nerdy and into video games, just like myself, but after that class I didn’t keep in as strong of contact with him. He was, and still is to this day, very much not socially outgoing (and this is probably part of what would lead to them peacefully ending their relationship). So, while I kept in contact with her over the following years, through graduation and beyond, he and I fell out of touch. Until a couple years or so after we had all graduated college, somewhere about 2013 or 2014, when I saw him post something on Facebook.

I was living on my own at the time, having finally moved out of my parents place, and my brother and his wife had asked me to move out of theirs to make room for their growing family. I was struggling to find things to do at home during my downtime because I also was not exceptionally social (which kind of worked against me living in a downtown apartment, where I could walk to the bars and meet people). At some point I spotted his post about building PC’s, and I don’t know what really compelled me to do it, but I sent him a message! I hadn’t actually talked to the guy much before, even when we were taking classes together, but his post intrigued me, and everything was downhill from there.

We started to hang out and chat about PC part’s and then he helped me build my first gaming PC. After that, we kept in touch regularly and I met his new girlfriend at the time who seemed super nice. We all got to know each other better over the next six months or so, and then they were talking about getting a new roommate to help reduce rent costs. They knew I was paying on medical debt at the time and asked me if I thought it would be cool to move in with them. It should be obvious that I said yes without hesitation. So, we all moved in together, sharing a three bedroom apartment with one of the rooms being our shared gaming office, and I’ve been living with at least him ever since. Their relationship didn’t actually last long, sadly, and it turned out she had red flags and issues that weren’t super obvious until later. I had the unfortunate honors of helping them mediate their break up, because she tried to move out without telling either of us and screw us on the rent. Ultimately, a new friendship forged through the fires of awkward adversity.

And that’s the story of how I met two people who would go on to become some of my best friends! It’s funny, sometimes, how the world can connect people you might not have met otherwise, and go on to build strong bonds with them over time (even after long gaps of no communication!)

When a child’s dream takes flight

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What is one of my earliest childhood memories?

DayOne

This prompt immediately sparked a memory to come flying up out of the depths of my mind, and I couldn’t help but want to share it.

I must have been two or three years old at the time, and my family lived in a town called Castlerock. Surprisingly enough, despite how long ago this was (over 30 years), I still have a few semi-solid memories, but there is one that involved a little toy helicopter that I feel like I’ll never fully forget. Looking back on it, I know that part of it was a dream I had, and I’m not sure how the lines of dream and reality blurred, but I had experienced something that in hindsight obviously could not have happened.

This little toy helicopter I had is probably impossible to find now, but I can remember some of the key characteristics fairly well. The body of it was clear plastic so you could see the inner working and had a red plastic propeller. As I recall, it was a wind-up toy that could spin the propeller fairly quickly.

Now, there are two important pieces to this memory. As I mentioned earlier, there is a dream portion. In the dream I was able to make the little helicopter fly, and it went down the hall and into my bedroom. From there the line blurs. I remember being so excited that something like this could have happened, and I took the little toy and ran to my older brother wanting to show him. I wound it up the same as I had done before and when the propeller started to spin I held it out, my hand flat, to proudly show him. But it didn’t take off. So I tried to toss it into the air, only to watch it tumble to the floor. I tried at least once more before my brother got bored and walked away uninterested in the wild imagination of a toddler.

Sadly, I never again saw that little toy helicopter fly under it’s own power in my dreams, but what surprises me most about this whole scenario is that it’s not just the earliest memory I have, but it’s likely the first dream I ever had that I could remember in any capacity.

My internal conflicts and challenges

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What are the biggest challenges you’re facing right now? How can you work to overcome them?

There are a handful of things I’m dealing with regularly that I don’t often share with anyone. Not with family. Not with friends. And certainly not with coworkers.

Am I going to share them here? Well, some of them, but only because I know myself well enough that I can handle those particular challenges on my own because I’ve done so before and know the steps I need to personally take. Others I’m still evaluating and may need to reach out and talk to certain people. I’ll leave those as private for the time being.

The ones I can share are personal goal, drive, and motivation oriented challenges.

Work has slowed down some, and my team is at a bit of a lull (but not a total standstill) for things that we might normally be doing on a regular basis. I have work available to me that I’m building up, but it’s a very slow build because it’s dependent on other people having the time and bandwidth to connect. These lulls, and “hurry up and wait” situations cause me to struggle to be productive with my current workload. I get things done in a timely enough fashion, but it still leaves me feeling a little empty. It saps my mental energy. I fall into a rut, and then it spills over into my private life a little bit at a time. I’m at my strongest when I have a “full plate” and am pushing my boundaries/limits to get things done. I’m the kind of person who works better under a little bit of pressure. So, how do I manage that right now? I have to remind myself that it’s okay to wait it out. I keep my manager informed of the way I’m feeling and we find work that needs doing (like updating internal team documentation and such) but I have to make sure I’m moderating myself as well. I can’t take it all on, or else there’s nothing for the rest of my team, and I risk burning through it all too quickly and just falling back into the rut.

How do I prevent it from spilling into my private life after all of that? I’m fortunate enough that my manager and the rest of my team are wonderful people and appreciate the intricacies of work/life balance. This allows me the flexibility to take time during the day to check on personal things. Taking a few minutes here and there to research things for my hobbies. Running errands for friends and family, and even sometimes my coworkers when they’re feeling a crunch in their own time. I “put myself to work” but in a different fashion to keep my mind engaged and try to force myself out of the rut and not lose too much of that mental energy.

On a more specific personal note, with trying to stay out of the rut in my private life, I’m making sure that I’m always aware of the sneaking feelings of imposter syndrome that try to creep in and keep me from writing. Self-managing those feelings is tough, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I may need to constantly remind myself of a few things. Nobody else will put your ideas on the page if they stay locked in your head. Even if what you write is something that seems similar to another writer, you still need to write it to get the experience or else you won’t grow and improve. If you leave that idea stuck in your head, never writing it out because of it being similar, then you won’t free yourself from it and be able to think of something new. Just write it out. It won’t actually hurt you.

Of course, external validation helps, but depending on the kind it is, it just feels like a crutch, or a double-edged sword.

So, for the time being, a lot of what I’m experiencing right now is just requiring patience and consistency. I just need to keep moving forward.

A double South Dakota wedding!

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

Yesterday evening was an interesting experience. It was my first time at a double wedding.

Some people are going to have their imaginations spike and see churches or cathedrals (or really expensive event centers), flowers everywhere, lots of people dressed in formal attire, extraordinary fancy food and cake.

Well, not here in small town South Dakota.

One of the grooms is a long time friend of mine (and previously a roommate) and he and his bride wanted to share their special day with her sister/best friend. So that’s just what they did!

It was a beautiful ceremony. Nothing extravagant, like at a huge church, but they held it at a very nice little lodge and event center on the edge of a small town (literally, the population of the town itself was below 1,000 people.) There was plenty of room for the four families and friends that attended, which was probably around 50 people or so? Dress code was practically non-existent, as people showed up in everything from blue jeans and a hoodie to something more formal. (I was worried about this part myself, and had asked my friend if it was a tie/no tie event and they said whatever we’re comfortable with.) People were very understanding about children, and even laughed and rolled with it when some struggled to stay quiet during the ceremony itself. Lots of little informal quirks during the ceremony that got laughs from everyone, including the brides and grooms. Like putting on a ring moments before being told by the officiant, or the officiant saying the other groom’s name incorrectly only to be corrected by both bride and groom (and a few others from the family section, which again drew laughs from all present).

The dinner was delicious, and again I know some people might think fancy catering, but here in South Dakota we apparently do family barbecue. The step-father of my friend’s bride/now wife had smoked something like 50-lbs of brisket and pork loin, and had started it at 2:00AM that morning! Absolutely amazing. Aside from the meats, there was baked beans, coleslaw, corn, and chips. For the dessert they didn’t do a massive wedding cake that everyone would get pieces of, but instead did cupcakes! (Personally, I think cupcakes is the way to go for events regardless of it being a wedding.)

The dance part of weddings was never my thing, but I made sure to stay for each couples first dance before I needed to leave. My roommate had also been invited (because the one groom had lived with us both at the same time) and although he wasn’t feeling well throughout the week prior (throat problems, not contagious, I promise) he felt well enough by the day of the wedding to join, so I drove us, but he was still struggling and was fading by that point, so I didn’t make him stay. It was already getting late and we had an hour long drive home.

I’ve been to multiple weddings (and part of a few) in my life, but this double wedding was my first and it was still a good time.

Halloween 2024

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

Nothing special today! I’ve been busy the last week and a half or so, and my schedule has been royally messed up, so I’m just going to enjoy the evening.

Happy Halloween everyone! (For those of us that celebrate it. I think I heard that Australia doesn’t????)

Sharing some life lessons

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What are the most important things you have learned in life so far?

I’ve got a few I can share, and I’ll keep this post simple by not going into too much detail or history behind what they mean to me.

You are the center point of your own world, but you are not the center of THE world or anyone else’s. Every step of the way through your life, you are the only person guaranteed to always be there, so remember to take care of yourself.

We may not always have someone else around to be there for us, but nobody gets through life alone. Unless you are somehow making absolutely everything you own from scratch, someone else is always providing something you have/want/need, so be grateful for the things you have that others put time and effort into making.

Don’t assume that everyone has their eyes on you, cares what you do, or even knows you exist. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking or doing except when you know your behavior/decisions will have an impact on the outcome of whatever you are doing, and vice versa.

I think about these few things near daily so as to remind myself of how to act as a decent person and not be a greedy, selfish, and cynical asshole.

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

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

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

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

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.

I present a cat

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

Work has been taking up a lot of my mental capacity these last couple of weeks, which has pushed me to write my daily posts later and later. I don’t want to miss out on that, so instead of answering the daily prompt I give you a cat!

My roommates have been out of town so Boogie here has been extra lovey with me.