Tag: dailyprompt

Customer service people are human too

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Can you admit a time you have likely caused a customer service person grief?

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

Honestly, this is something I’ve never fully understood, in general, about people’s behavior toward one another.

I don’t believe I’ve ever caused a customer service person grief, and that’s because of personal experience. I’ve been in that role multiple times in my life. From the video game store to food service. I know what they have to deal with on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t wish grief or anything of the sort upon them. The vast majority of times they’re just trying to do their job and get through their day. They aren’t out to get you or your family, and they aren’t trying to get in your way. Why treat them like they’re less than human over any of it?

Just be nice to each other out there. Especially this time of year.

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.

A food I like that others do not

Taylor Burian1 Comment

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.

A tough decision

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What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

Sometimes the things that motivate us to NOT make a decision are based on fear and anxiety, and it takes effort to overcome.

I don’t know if it was the TOUGHEST decision I’ve had to make but it was definitely up there.

It involved two things: the dentist, and money.

I’ve had significant dental work done in the last five years, and it was not cheap. I had to overcome the anxiety of going to the dentist and dealing with a major life changing circumstance of teeth removal and dentures. I had to overcome the fear of not necessarily having the funds to handle such a thing, either.

But in the long run, I don’t regret it. Mouth troubles have been reduced so much, and I’m in a much better position financially than I probably would have been in had I NOT gone through with it (because it could have been so much worse if I let my dental issues go unmanaged).

Now I’m not so afraid of going to the dentist. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I don’t hate it so much that I avoid it anymore.

Family specialties for the holidays

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Daily writing prompt
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
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My family has, for a very long time, stuck with more “traditional” holiday meal planning and dishes. Thanksgiving and Christmas are typically turkey’s with stuffing/dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, things like that. There have been a couple of times in the last ten years where we opted for ordering a catered meal that a local/regional grocery store chain offers for the holiday’s and we have ordered prime rib, but this was primarily to reduce the strain on the family trying to coordinate meal planning and expedite cooking so that we could be more efficient with spending time with my stepmom (may she rest in peace) when she was fighting cancer. Anyways, none of these are really “special” dishes.

There have been rare occasions where we opted to make our family recipe of töltött káposzta (Hungarian stuffed cabbage, there are tons of recipes out there with variations, so I won’t go turning this into a recipe blog) but it is more likely that we cook that outside the holiday time frame. So, I can’t really say with any certainty that we have any special dishes we make for the holiday’s.

Extra time for activities

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

Well, I’m going to be honest, I like sleep, so I would be a little sad if I suddenly didn’t need it.

That being said, I could cover a lot of ground in my hobbies if I didn’t need sleep. It would probably be a lot like that episode of American Dad! where Stan has those pills that make him not need sleep. I could finish all kinds of games on my back log, write so many extra blog posts and create a serialized story I’ve had in the back of my mind to eventually publish here (alongside writing the other novels).

The only downside is I don’t yet currently have the physical space I need to feel comfortable doing something like that in the first place, as I’m trying to respect my roommates space and not be loud. (Spooky games sometimes make me jump and yell, okay?)

There’s probably some other things I could do also, like better meal prepping and making better time for the gym.

If only…

That driving pet peeve

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Daily writing prompt
Name your top three pet peeves.
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Last year I wrote about the one pet peeve I could come up with and included some brief educational notes regarding reading road signs.

This all still applies, but I wanted to take a moment to address another couple of facets of driving that really irk me, and it’s rather timely that I’m writing about it again tonight. My roommates were just out and about this evening and experienced something driving related that NEEDS to be called out.

PAY ATTENTION TO SPLIT/DIVIDED ROADS.

My roommates were on the other side of town visiting with someone and picking up a few things, and on their way home they encountered someone who decided to make a left turn into oncoming traffic (possibly without looking both ways). The road was divided, so technically to complete the left turn into the correct lane you have to cross two lanes of oncoming traffic and pass through the opening in the median. This person obviously didn’t do this, and my roommate had to swerve out of the way. Oh, and also this person driving toward them was wearing sunglasses. At night.

Don’t wear your damn sunglasses at night while driving. Seriously, just don’t, you’re a public safety hazard.