Tag: Habits

The reason I blog

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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.

Some daily habits of 2024

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What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

I’ll be honest when I say I don’t know if these habits are improving my quality of life, or by how much. Some of them are being done on a kind of trial basis, so they might change or be replaced, but they all have one thing in common. I’m doing them, regardless of the amount of effort, to force myself to stay consistent.

One is answering these daily writing prompts. It’s helping me be comfortable, mentally, with the task of writing no matter how much or how little I do. It’s all progress.

Another is trying to stay consistent with daily Duolingo with friends. A few of us are getting our friend streaks going for a change, which is nice, because it shows me that I’m not alone in my language learning endeavors.

Those same friends and I also do the daily New York Times games of Wordle, Connections, and The Mini Crossword. Part of it is a competitive thing for each of us against each other as well as ourselves, but a big reason I personally do them daily is because of the mental stimulation. I also do the Strands and Sudoku to help stretch my brain a bit further and keep myself “in shape” mentally for quickness in puzzle solving. Being able to catch subtle patterns or details can be really helpful in many parts of life, so I find that to be an improvement in quality of life being maintained.

The final thing I’ll share is that I have a daily recurring checklist on my phone that is tied to my calendar. Daily tasks that I need to do, whether at a specific time or otherwise, so that I get reminded by notifications and visuals when flipping home screens during my busy day. (Taking daily medications on time is an important reason I do that, and I’ve recently spread them out through the day for effectiveness.)

In the grand scheme of things, some of these are small habits that take very little time, but the consistency with them is what I believe makes the most impact in quality of life. Every little thing counts!

Strategizing my health and well-being

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
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I don’t know that I have “strategies” associated to my health and well-being. I probably SHOULD, but I really don’t? That daily prompt from a couple weeks ago about strategies for comfort was definitely easier to answer.

I suppose you could probably count annual health checks with my doctor and optometrist. Having that as a routine has been helpful, but I haven’t always stuck to what my doctor has recommended (which I should be taking more seriously) and so every year is relatively the same outcome.

Trying to think through this prompt has me realizing I should set aside some time to review and make a better plan.

Funky sleep schedule

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Daily writing prompt
What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?
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My sleep is all over the place.

“Bedtime” is supposed to be between 10:00PM and 11:00PM but often times I’m awake later. Once I’m in bed, sleep usually hits anywhere between 11:30PM and 3:00AM. Obviously, that’s not good, especially when I typically have to be up by 7:30AM to get to work on time. Though, I usually make up for it (a smidge) by going home over lunch to take a nap. Sometimes, I just lay there, and other times it’s actually a very restful power nap.

That’s all during the week. Weekends are worse, sadly. Depending on the weekend’s priorities, I’ll still fall asleep at the same times, but waking up is a whole different story. If I have something important going on and it happens before Noon? Then I usually am awake an hour or two beforehand (unless I fell asleep REALLY late, and then it’s more like 30 minutes.) If I have nothing going? I’m most certainly sleeping in. I’ll TRY to be awake before Noon on those kinds of days, but it isn’t uncommon for me to sleep until 1:00PM.

It’s not a very healthy sleep cycle, but such is life.

A simple Thank You goes a long way

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How do you express your gratitude?

I try to live my day to day life in a way that I can be appropriately grateful to the people I interact with.

If someone does something for me, I try to make sure I end the interaction with a smile and a “thank you” because I believe that it means more to the receiver than I will likely ever know. They might be having a bad day, or have been interacting with a lot of shitty people, so if my interaction with them is peaceful then it’s just one less weight added to their conscience.

Sometimes, though, I do show my gratitude in ways that go beyond the smiles and the words “thank you”. If I’m out and about shopping, and I see something that makes me think of them, I’ll consider buying it for them with no expectations of getting anything in return. It’s just a nice gesture of mine for them being a positive part of my life.

Simple as all that. A smile, a “thank you”, and moving along. That’s the bare minimum, and it really can go a long way.

Simple daily habits of 2024

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What are your daily habits?

For the time being, as I’m working on consistency in various areas, my daily habits are fairly simple.

I take meds in the morning and evening. The morning meds I take when I get up for work (during the week) or I make sure I wake up to take them before going back to sleep on the weekends (I like to sleep in unless I have something important going on.)

I try to answer the daily writing prompt every single day, but some days I skip it and just post something relevant to what I had going on that day. Today should mark 257 days in a row of writing a post for my blog.

I’ve also been working on learning French through Duolingo, and with using the streak freezes (I’m not perfect and have missed plenty of days) I’m well over 400 days of doing that.

The last thing I’ll mention that is a daily habit of mine is some of the New York Times games. I almost always play Wordle and Connections, but occasionally the daily mini crossword as well.

That’s it for my consistent daily habits right now, but I have other things I need to work on that should be daily as well.

Life’s sacrifices big and small

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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.

Small things add up

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Daily writing prompt
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
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There are so many different things I could change in my life that would be improvements. If I were to look at them the way I normally do, I wouldn’t be able to stick to them because I have a problem with that.

For instance, take the idea of “eating better/healthier” and trying to treat that in its entirety as a small improvement. The idea is simple enough to follow and seems like it could be a small thing to do but we often take for granted what our relationship with food is even like. How much thought do you put into what you’re eating?

I’ve gone through different phases of eating healthier and trying do things differently for weight management. I’ve seen success with some, while others I failed miserably with. Although the thought of eating better is simple, it means a change in lifestyle. You have to identify many more changes than you expect when trying to make a “small improvement” related to food. Source and acquisition. Quantities and preparation methods. Storage. So, rather than trying to treat something that is actually much larger as a “small improvement” one thing I’ve been slowly trying to integrate into my life in an attempt to modify my lifestyle towards eating better is simply just “eat some veggies” or “have some fruit” in addition to the other things I eat.

It doesn’t matter that I might be adding more calories to my meals, I just need to add better sources of nutrition to those meals. Then when I’ve made that a consistent thing I can move on to the next small improvement.

Being a part of a community

Taylor Burian2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What do you do to be involved in the community?
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Truth be told, I don’t do a whole lot to be involved in my community at any level. I’m very introverted by nature, so I don’t go out. I don’t typically participate in activities outside the home. I go to work, I go to the grocery store and sometimes the gas station, and I come home. Regardless of how long any of that takes, I show people kindness and respect as much as possible so that I’m at least putting good out into the world even if I’m not being an active participant in the community.

There are rare occasions that I do go somewhere outside of the norm. Lately, it has been to my nephew’s soccer games. Where ever they are, I try to go, and in those cases I interact more with strangers, but we’re all there for the same reason, we cheer on the kids and support them in doing something they enjoy, so we’re not focused explicitly on actively interacting with one another since our focus is on the fields where the kids are playing.

That’s about it lately. I should maybe get out a bit more.

How I use social media

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How do you use social media?

Social media is very different today from when I first started with Myspace 20 years ago.

I went from Myspace into Facebook during high school, with Myspace being abandoned after only a few years. Facebook was the core of my social media use for the majority of all this time. At first I was using it to seem interesting and garner the attention of my peers (like most teenagers and young adults in college did) while staying connected with them and my family. That has long since changed. Now I don’t even post anything on Facebook, or hardly use it at all, except to stay connected with family and very select friends.

When Twitter (I refuse to call it anything else) came along, I didn’t jump on it right away. When I did eventually start using it I hadn’t yet started streaming on Twitch, but that is what it ultimately became. My connection and attempts at increasing engagement. Just like everyone else. Instagram went much the same way when I finally took the plunge into that territory. The difference being that I had also begun shifting into painting miniatures, so I was trying to share my work while advertising my Twitch channel.

Somewhere in the mix of all of that I also started writing again. I had the grand idea of trying to mesh writing together with all of those platforms. I tried to create engagement with my Twitch audience by allowing requests for me to write something for them based on points. All of that was supposed to be shared here on the blog, and I did good at first but obviously that didn’t go anywhere and I still have a backlog of requests.

At some point I backed off of streaming because of the amount of time and effort it required, which I was struggling to afford when work was taking up a lot of my mental and emotional bandwidth. I tried to continue using Instagram to share my work with painting the miniatures, and I still do that today to a small degree whenever I finish something and feel inclined to share.

Now there are some other social media platforms out there, like Threads, which I have reserved my typical username on but I never really use (just like all the others.) Instead, I’ve been focusing on writing here on the blog and in my private note space for the stories I’m developing.

That should cover my history and current usage of social media. Maybe it will change again in the future, but who knows?