Tag: Habits

Minor things in the pursuit of happiness

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

It’s unfortunate that happiness can’t be a steady state of mind or being and that we have to constantly chase it, but that at least gives most of us the drive to live.

That drive to chase our dreams and trying to attain happiness can sometimes overshadow the simpler things in life that can bring us happiness. That’s where my mind goes when I think about the “everyday things” in the prompt. Not to overlook simple things that bring happiness when life is hectic.

The first everyday thing that came to mind that brings me happiness is one of my roommates cats. When they first moved in a couple years ago the cats were very shy and avoided me. One of them is very sweet and warmed up to me very quickly while it took months to get to the point where the other would even approach me to sniff my hand. That second one, named Boogie, is incredibly vocal and with the loudest purring I’ve experienced in a cat. What brings me happiness (to get back to the prompt) is the way Boogie will talk back at you, loudly, from time to time. It’s definitely one of those “you have to be there to experience it” kind of things, but that’s one that brings me happiness.

The other four everyday things that bring me happiness are all relatively the same or interconnected.

I love solving puzzles and problems. That burst of joy when something clicks and I make progress is what keeps me coming back. Solving puzzles in games, figuring out a solution for problems with crafting and hobbies, making connections for potential synergy with mechanics in Magic: The Gathering when building new decks, and (on a work related note) solving a problem at work that involves scripting or formulas. All of these are interconnected because of the way my mind works and processes information, and each one can bring me happiness in their own ways.

I’m sure I could come up with more “everyday things” to throw out that bring me happiness but then nobody would want to finish reading this post so I’ll end it here

Happy Friday, and I hope you all have or find those “everyday things” that bring you happiness!

My life post pandemic

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Daily writing prompt
How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
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I’ve talked about it before multiple times but only really as brief mentions for other topics.

The way I adapted to live during and after the pandemic.

During the pandemic, I ordered a LOT of food through DoorDash and Grubhub. An embarrassing amount, considering I was basically confined to the house and could have cooked my meals anytime I wanted. Afterwards, when restrictions lifted and I was going back into the office nearly everyday, I try to avoid that and remind myself of just how much money I could be saving by not using those apps, but I still do use them on occasion. It’s nice to be able to have something delivered to the office (on very rare occasions) when I know I’m going to have a busy day full of meetings. It’s also nice to use those apps purely for reference too! I can pull them up, see nearly every restaurant near me, and check what hours and menus are for each. Then I can either order for pick up or remind myself I’m not really THAT hungry to warrant ordering out. The cost of convenience is not really worth it anymore.

Technology and the home work setup changed during and after the pandemic in a way I never really thought I would feel okay with accepting. I need my separate spaces for work and home. During the pandemic this sucked because I basically lived in my bedroom for 20+ hours a day. Work, eat, play, sleep. At the time, I built a room divider to help separate my bedroom into sleeping area and gaming/working area. (It’s just a 4×8 sheet of wood cut to a 4×7 shape with a cube storage shelf screwed onto it for stability and organization.) After the pandemic was more or less ended, I moved my computer setup back into the basement along with the room divider so that I could kind of shut it off from the rest of the basement for some privacy and to serve as a backdrop for when I was streaming.

Before the pandemic hit and everything shut down, I used to go to Walmart and other late night stores all the time. 2:00AM and can’t sleep? Walk around Walmart and do some light shopping. Although technically I did that a lot anyway because I enjoyed the peace and quiet of shopping when nobody else was around. Now I can’t really do that, unless I wanted to spend time at gas stations that are open 24/7. I’ve had to adapt to the idea that I’ll just have to be quick and methodical about my grocery shopping excursions and plan them as best I can at times of the day when the crowds are lightest. That usually means early mornings are an hour or two before close.

I’m sure there are probably some other ways I’ve adapted to life post-pandemic but if I can’t think of them off the top of my head they probably aren’t as broad or significant as the things I mentioned above. Oh well, life changes all the time and I’m sure I’ll have to adapt to new things again in the near future.

The current morning ritual

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Daily writing prompt
What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?
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My morning ritual depends on Weekday versus Weekend but they’re still fairly similar and simple.

Monday through Friday, as long as I have work, I get up around 7am. I take my morning meds, brush my teeth, shave, shower, all that bathroom stuff, and then get dressed for work. Then I’m off! I live relatively close to work so I don’t typically worry about morning rush hour traffic. If I happen to be working from home I like to stretch out the morning routine a little bit, but only in so much as I can log in by 8am, check emails and see what meetings I have for the day, and do my morning routine in between those kinds of tasks.

Saturday and Sunday are similar in that I wake up around the same time to take my morning meds, which only takes a minute or so if I have my water bottle filled, and then I go back to sleep for a couple hours (typically because I stayed up late playing games or reading.) When I wake up for the day I go about the rest of the morning routine. That’s just about it. Nothing special. No “ritual”, just the standard types of things people do in the morning.

Trouble saying No

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How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

Short answer: Not enough.

I’ve talked about some of my goals previously, like losing weight/getting in shape/eating better and aiming to get a novel published. One of my problems is that I enjoy some of my hobbies so much that I prefer to do those instead.

Another problem, and one I see as having more impact on my decisions, is that I don’t always have the mental or physical bandwidth to work on those goals when I already dedicate quite a bit to my full-time job. The funny part of this is that I don’t really have a problem saying “no” to things at work!

It isn’t that I refuse to say “yes” to things at work, I’m just very conscious of the work my teammates and I do. Every “yes” and “no” is very calculated. I will bend over backwards to help my teammates because I know they would do (and have done) the same for me. We each bring to the table different skills, personalities, and work styles. I try to keep these things in mind every time I have to help them, even if it’s just to be a sounding board to bounce ideas off of because sometimes the situation they find themselves in requires a “no” and they struggle to accept that conclusion. The reason being that a couple of them will sometimes take on work that they aren’t responsible for and not ask for help from the rest of us or put the onus back on the appropriate team/individual who SHOULD be responsible for that work.”Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” That kind of thing.

So, from a work perspective I say “no” plenty enough, but on an overall personal level I could stand to say it more often. Especially to myself.

I’m sure some armchair psychologist/psychiatrist behind a screen could stumble across this post and think they know exactly what is wrong with this picture, but I have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t that easy. (This means I’m not looking for unsolicited advice, thank you.) I bring this up because I see people on social media think they can do a self-diagnosis all the time, plus I was recently watching some videos on YouTube from Dr. K (HealthyGamerGG, in case anyone wants to look into it themselves.)

Being complimented

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Daily writing prompt
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
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Unfortunately, this post might come across as a bit of a humble brag, but the prompt is practically asking for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate any and all compliments I receive, I just usually feel awkward about them because I don’t much like the attention.

A majority of the compliments I get are at work. My manager loves to sing our praises and acknowledges the gifts and talents that each of us on her team bring to the table. So, when she starts going with handing out the compliments I usually just respond in a manner that says “I was just doing what I was supposed to do.” or something of the sort. I apply myself to my job in the ways I know best and that’s all there is to it, so I don’t usually give it any extra thought.

As for an exact compliment, well, I don’t have one at hand because they’re all on Teams, my email, or in a Christmas card (or something similar) that I don’t recall where I stashed them.

I’ll paraphrase a compliment from my manager: “Taylor, I am so blessed to have you on the team and I don’t know where we would be without the gifts and talents you bring each and every day. Thank you for always being willing to jump in and use your skills with Power BI and Excel to help with creating new tools and reports to support the efforts of your teammates.”

As for whether that would qualify as the “best” compliment I ever received I couldn’t say, because, again, my manager likes to give them out frequently enough that I have a hard time selecting just one. (For the record, she doesn’t just give them out like candy, I maybe get compliments like this once a month.)

The personal budget

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Daily writing prompt
Write about your approach to budgeting.
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On the whole, my budgeting sucks, simple as that, but I still have some sort of method to follow.

To start with, I have a spreadsheet that I put all my numbers into for tracking, and I keep it up to date almost daily. In this age of technology, it’s super easy to do with my phone. I can access my bank, credit cards, Paypal, Venmo, etc. so that I can keep tabs on any new transactions. Then I also have access to my spreadsheet through my phone, so it’s just as easy to bounce between the apps.

Each bill or monthly charge is tracked as a line item, and I keep track of each of their relative due dates next to them. Those are the first two columns, and I freeze them in place for scrolling for the next part. The rest of the columns have the Pay Dates for the year and the anticipated amount earned on that check. Then I go through each bill and add the amount due for each pay check that will be closest in date before the bill is due. Everything gets calculated at the bottom, and I have line items for Food/Groceries, Gas, and Savings. Those last three are more fluid because there will be weeks I don’t need to drive as much, or I have extra grocery money because I didn’t need to spend extra on something like bulk laundry detergent. This is where I say my budgeting sucks. Because I don’t do a good job with having the extra money that I don’t ultimately put into savings. I take out cash for the food and gas to try and limit myself, but I will sometimes go over or find myself in a situation where I need to pay for something that I can’t use cash for, so it ends up on the credit card (because the bank account would overdraw otherwise.)

There you go. My brief budget rundown.

Bloganuary 23rd: Doing things for fun

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
List five things you do for fun.
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Personally, everyone should have a hobby, and preferably a creative one if possible.

Unfortunately, while I do have a handful of things I do on a regular basis for fun, I also have a penchant for dabbling in new things. Maybe it’s just because I’m looking for something else to add to my skill sets or list of substitute hobbies.

Anyways, the five things I like to do for fun.

On the creative side of things I like to paint miniatures for tabletop games, although I’m slowly running out of mini’s because I’ve forbidden myself from buying more games that we haven’t played. So I’m also working on 3D printing things to paint. I also enjoy putting together those 3D wooden objects, like the ones made and sold by UGEARS. They’re kind of like adult LEGO’s at this point, except permanent and not transformable.

On the non-creative side, I like to read and play video games for fun, especially sci-fi and fantasy stuff. I would separate out puzzles but most of the time those are part of the video games category because of the medium I choose to do puzzles in, such as the game Escape Simulator which is designed around the category of Room Escape games. Not to sound I actually started playing them probably sixteen years or so ago when they were still Flash-based and were a big thing coming up in Japan.

There is kind of a middle ground between the two, creative and non-creative, is Magic: The Gathering. The reason being is that on the non-creative side I get to consume media. Lots of reading of the cards and the backstories. On the creative side I get to flex my brain a bit and try to figure out how to play with new cards and new mechanics of the game. Creating a cohesive deck with lots of synergy between the cards to try to find win conditions is a lot of fun and often takes up a lot of time when I get the itch to build a new Commander Deck.

That’s all I’ve got for major hobbies that I do for fun. I have some other things I probably could add to the list but I don’t do them as frequently so they’re not as important. Still, it helps to make sure I’m never without something to do with my free time.

Bloganuary 20th: Dreams of going pro as an author

Taylor Burian1 Comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
What’s your dream job?
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Super simple question for me today! I can get behind that when I’m getting sucked into playing the hottest new early access game.

My dream job has changed a couple of times between childhood and adulthood. Today, it is becoming a professional author and being able to support myself on that kind of income.

I’m working on bettering my daily habits to write consistently, like answering these daily prompts. I’m over 100 days in a row of writing every day, and I’m getting used to the idea that it is okay to put less important things aside to focus on writing if I hope to improve my habits and reach that goal. Hopefully, someday, I can publish something and be successful enough to quit my job and keep writing. Then my days would be wildly different! I’d have MORE time to do the things I want to do in tandem with writing, because I would end up substituting time spent working in an office with time spent writing.

I know I can do it if I stick with it, and I know I can keep up with writing demands if I look at the results of my NaNoWriMo 2023 daily word tracking. It is completely possible for me to write 300k+ words per year. I just have to dig in and go for it.

Getting back to it

Taylor Burian

If you’re reading this, then I hope you’ve read my last few entries and noticed I’m trying to get back into the routine of writing. I’ve been using those daily prompts that show up in the Jetpack app (which is how I keep track of my blog while on the go) and that has been a helpful start.

Right now, the goal is to follow those prompts whenever I see one that interests me, or maybe refer to a previous one in the list, and try to build the habit of just writing out whatever comes to mind. Eventually I’d like to get back into a near daily habit of writing out these posts, so we’ll see how it goes. I think I’ll also dig into the drafts I somehow still have and see what I find.

Wish me luck!

Habits, continued…

Taylor Burian

I recently touched on my habits around spending and saving money, but I think now is a good time to talk about food and exercise habits.

When you take the time to learn about food and the way diet affects your lifestyle (and vice versa) you also look at the way society pushes different products and it becomes easy to see that not everything thats being pushed at us is actually good. We live such busy lives that we become more likely to choose convenience options when it comes to food and drink. We don’t prioritize getting enough physical activity during the day and wind up leading sedentary lives. All of this can be considered true when you look at the average gamer, and especially true when you stop to consider the activity of streaming.

After taking some time to think through all of this I realized I need to take a better stance on my own personal health in regards to eating and exercise habits. So, I’ve taken all of the information I have already, grabbing more from research, and I’ve decided that there’s no better time than now to make changes. I’ll spare you all of the nitty gritty details of how I got to this point, but I’m going to work on improving my eating and exercise habits. The ultimate goal will be to lose weight, building a little bit of muscle and strength along the way, but it will not be a short journey or a temporary change.

I probably won’t communicate a lot of progress on this journey, but if I do have tidbits to share they’ll likely be over on my Twitter account.

Stay awesome, and stay healthy.