Tag: Life

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!)

My favorite place to be in the city that isn’t home

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Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite place to go in your city?
View all responses

The last time I answered this prompt I talked about my favorite place being home. About the fact the things I want to do are only really done at home, even though there are technically public places I can go to play games and such.

This time, I wanted to touch on something I hadn’t thought about it ages. Places you can go in your city that offer something you CAN’T get at home.

The sight of a sea of stars that extends for miles in front of you.

Okay, so technically I’m talking about the lights of the city and being able to see them from a higher place. There are only a couple of places that this can be achieved. A tall building or somewhere with naturally higher elevation. My first apartment offered something of this, although the angles of my windows weren’t great and the fact that my building was at one of the lowest elevations in the downtown area made it harder to see everything even from the 11th floor. Since it didn’t offer as great of a view, it is disqualified. Instead, we have “better” contenders (by viewing angle and elevation) that you unfortunately can’t just hang out at. There is a hill north of downtown that offers an interesting night time view during winter after the leaves of all the trees have long since been gone, but it’s right outside the state penitentiary, so that’s basically off-limits. Another hill, this time northeast of downtown, has a great view to a certain extent, but it looks over more of an industrial area south of it and you can’t see beyond the next hill a little over a mile away. THAT hill gives you an okay view of downtown and some of the area east and south, depending on the direction you’re facing while driving. The last solid contender is a hill on the south side of town looking north and west that offer some good distance to see a night time landscape with lots of city lights, but again, it depends on which way you’re driving.

Alright, so I guess my city doesn’t have GREAT view spots for this kind of thing, unless you’re in a tall building in a specific location, so I don’t really have a favorite spot but rather just some liked spots that create a burning desire to see something I can’t get here. (Technically, there might be some spots back in Colorado that will do the trick, and maybe I’ll get some pictures next year.) Anyways, except for by plane on a clear night, I’ll just keep dreaming. (Maybe I should look into an evening flight in the near future.)

Current life versus dream life

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

How far off from your current life and daily routine is this vision of your dream life you previously described?

In previous posts I’ve shared different pieces of what my ideal or dream life would be like, and I have to say, as far as this prompt goes, I’m still a ways off.

I’m still working a full-time job, so my weekdays are occupied with that instead of writing. Also because of this, I don’t have the flexibility to go do things during the day that I currently would have to do outside of work hours or over the weekends (such as video games or going to the gym.)

Someday, maybe, if I keep at it and get lucky enough to become a published author (I’ve said this a lot, but still.)

Currently Reading: November 2024

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Daily writing prompt
What book are you reading right now?
View all responses

I’ve been ever so slowly working through the Mistborn trilogy (currently on book two) but that is not the book I am primarily reading right now.

Unfortunately, I cannot divulge any details about the book I’m reading because I’m sworn to secrecy. The only thing you get to know is I’m helping a friend.

Other than those, I have a massive back log of books to read through, and I keep adding more! I might have a problem.

Hobby collaborations with family

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Who do I know that shares my passion or hobby, and how can we collaborate or support each other?

DayOne

I sometimes forget that my siblings are very much like myself when it comes to our interests or the things that really intrigue us. For instance, my older brother has been getting back into drawing and sketching in the last few years, and has also been dabbling with 3d printing.

So, this past weekend I had stopped back down to visit my siblings after spending time with Dad, and my brothers and I were chatting about the makeshift workshop setup in one of the garages (my brothers live next to each) as well as the little project my older brother was working on. He had designed and 3d printed some tool guides and jigs to go along with some 3d printed mounting brackets for a portable tabletop easel he was making out of an old chair or something. The discussion eventually turned back towards some of my own projects, like the life sized Charmander that I’ve been painting, and I was telling them about the predicament I’m in with completing it. (I don’t have a separate workshop space, and airbrushing leads to fumes in the basement where my little hobby desk is.) So, we looked things over in the garage, talked about environmental factors, and tried to determine if it would be feasible for me to continue the project down there. Given that it’s getting colder now, it may not be a good idea because we would need a shop heater (my younger brother’s concern was fumes igniting, which is completely valid) and there may be too much saw dust yet around that can be kicked up (my older brother said he would look at getting the space better cleaned up) but we’ll see what they can solve for in the next couple weeks, as I might still take them up on the offer around Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I am trying to create a temporary enclosure for my hobby space so that I can prevent excessive fumes from propagating throughout the basement because I’ll still have other projects even beyond working on Charmander that will require some kind of airbrushing.

An update on collecting rocks

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?
View all responses

Last year, I answered this prompt talking about a small agate I found as a kid.

I regret to inform you all that I still have not found it. I was even recently back home in my old room but I totally spaced looking for it because I was busy helping my dad with cleaning since he is recovering from hip surgery. (He’s doing great, by the way, no concerns with his mobility, it’s just that he lives in a 120+ year old farm house and the stairs up to the second story are steep and narrow. Not something I want him attempting to traverse only three weeks or so after surgery.)

I’ll have to make a special note in my phone to remind myself to go looking for it. There’s some neat things (to me, anyways) that are still hiding up in my old room that I could probably share here! Fingers crossed I remember.

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.

Storytime: Calvin and the black (cat) market

Taylor Burian1 Comment

Start your story with a character being led somewhere by a black cat.

prompt courtesy of Reedsy

The reflection of the hallways artificial lighting, normally cast upon the pristine finished steel flooring and walls leading to the Admiral’s office, was eerily disrupted by the black cat that Calvin was following to the teleporter room nearby. It padded along silently, a bizarre sheen flitting across its fur every time they passed a light, combined with the near void-like coloring, made it seem like he was following a shimmering hole in space with a tail casually whipping back and forth. Only moments before, Calvin had asked Admiral Slodpolk what the assignment was, but all the crazy old man said was “Follow the cat and bring back it’s goods.”

They arrived in front of the teleporter room, and the cat, now facing Calvin, looked up at him expectantly with brilliant emerald eyes that almost seemed to float in nothingness. Calvin sighed but opened the door. He followed the cat into the room and instructed the computer to beam them down to the planet’s surface. The cat leaped up on Calvin’s shoulder and let out an aggressive, but not angry, meow that caused Calvin to jump back from the console. The void-like cat, now perched on his shoulder, dug in it’s claws to help maintain balance, and then meowed again, this time a little more politely, and the computer lit up with new coordinates that appeared to be a mile below the planets surface. Calvin was wincing in pain for a second before his jaw dropped. The cat gave a slight purr and gently bumped the side of Calvin’s head before jumping off his shoulder to pad over to the teleporter platform. Calvin instinctively rubbed his shoulder where the claws no doubt left some marks in his skin beneath his uniform, all while staring at the computer console.

Another meow caught his attention and caused Calvin to sputter a moment as he realized the computer was waiting for a second entity to join the cat on the platform. He walked over but stopped short of stepping on the platform, looking down at the cat that was watching him. He could have sworn it was smiling at him for some reason. It meowed aggressively again, and Calvin took that as indication he should probably stop hesitating and just get on with it.

The platform lit up as Calvin got in position. He opened his mouth and was about to address the teleporter console when, in a sort of pleasant chirping sound, the cat apparently issued the command to begin transmission. In an instant they were in a dimly lit cave deep beneath the planets surface. Calvin blinked his eyes several times, trying to adjust to flicker torches that lined the walls, and stifled a coughing fit from the dust he was waving out of his face. This cat is sophisticated enough to somehow communicate with our technology, and yet they’re using fire to light up a cave? Calvin thought to himself.

The cat nuzzled against his leg to get his attention before it walked over to a spot in a nearby wall between two torches. Calvin followed along, still confused as to the circumstance he was in by following this cat that almost blended into the very shadows of the cave. It scratched a few times at the wall, and then waited. Calvin picked at his collar, the heat of the cave now apparent to him in his stifling pseudo-military uniform that the Admiral made all crew members wear aboard his ship, was starting to make him sweat. He started fidgeting and looking around at the shifting shadows caused by the torches and realized they were in a very long tunnel. A few moments passed, and an almost child-like voice spoke up from somewhere near his feet. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you back to your ship and it’s precious climate control in a few minutes.” Calvin stumbled back and looked around for where the voice came from. “Holy shit! Who’s there?!”

“Calm down, calm down, it’s just me.” The void-like cat had started speaking, and Calvin started to fan himself in the heat.

“I must be hallucinating. This is probably another of the Admiral’s prank like tests.” Calvin thought he was losing it.

“No you dummy, I’m just forbidden to speak in other languages when off-planet. Our kind have a reputation to uphold.” The cat spoke again, and then before Calvin could ask it anything the cave wall began to shake and slide back. A seemingly normal light source, relative to Calvin’s usual situation aboard The Last Opportunity, issued from a slit in the wall. As the wall continued to slide open with a grinding sound, the cat slid through as soon as there was room. A rush of cooler air escaped and washed over Calvin, his shoulders sagged a little with the relief it brought. He hurried to get himself inside, determined to be in a more comfortable and air-conditioned area. As soon as Calvin was in, the opening began to close behind him, and he realized he was in a much more sophisticated space that was all white. The cat would have stood out in this space but was nowhere to be seen, and Calvin slowly walked through, looking around at tables, chairs, desks, and large, clear plastic cases. It dawned on him that he was in a lab of some sort. The cat leaped up on a desk at the far end of the lab-like space, Calvin finally seeing the hundreds of stations lined up from one end to the other. It took him a minute to cross, but he could hear the cat scratching at something on the desk, the sound of its claws scraping across the surface echoing through the lab.

When Calvin finally stood over the cat on the desk it stopped clawing at a small case and looked up at him. “Here.” is all it said. A button was blinking on the case while a strange cross-hatched pattern faded on a pad next to it. Calvin, more than a little perplexed, slowly reached out to press the button. The cat jumped off the desk and casually padded off to somewhere else in the lab, calling back to Calvin as it went “Tell your Admiral thank you for the food.” The case opened with a pressurized hiss, and some sort of white smoke wafted out with a fresh scent. Calvin waved it away and reached inside to pull out the Admiral’s hat. “Hey wait a second….” was the last thing Calvin got out before he was unceremoniously beamed back up to the ship, where the Admiral was waiting for him in the teleporter room. The Admiral snatched the hat out of Calvin’s hands and popped it onto his hands. “Ah, much better! Those cats are great at dry-cleaning hats.”

Calvin sputtered, still standing on the teleporter platform, and watched as the Admiral strutted out of the room. “You mean we smuggled all that food for cats?”

Late 2024 Podcast choices

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What podcasts are you listening to?
View all responses

The last time this question came around, I had a list of a handful of podcasts that I had been listening to up to that point. Unfortunately, I’ve backed off of that list. I just haven’t made a lot of time to listen to them. I’ll still go through a couple items, though.

First off, the Writing Excuses podcast is something I still occasionally listen to, and I even made my own playlist (click here if you’re interested in learning about what they call the Elemental Genres) for one of the particular years that had structured content. I go back from time to time and listen to this subset of their content because I find it fascinating how they deconstructed stories into easily identifiable themes/genres. Each listen through I’m either learning something new/connecting new dots or I’m being reminded of something that I should go back and check in my own writing.

The other podcasts in the 2023 posts have fallen off substantially in my routine. Instead, I’ve ended up listening to a lot of D&D Live Play content this year. Particularly Legends of Avantris when I’m working on my painting/printing projects. They’re an absolutely hilarious group that I discovered through animated scenes that get shared in Reels or Shorts.

I should probably go back and look through the rest of the podcasts I used to listen to and maybe see about working them into my listening routine again. We’ll see, though, because there is only so much time in the day.