Tag: Life

A note about respect for pro athletes

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Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.

The short answer: I can’t name any.

The slightly longer answer: I don’t really care about any pro sports, so I don’t pay attention to teams or individual players. I’ve heard some names in the news, but I don’t recall almost anything about them. It’s hard to have respect for someone you don’t know. Are they good or bad people off the field/court? No idea.

That being said, it’s not like I actively dislike or show disrespect towards any pro athletes either.

Relaxation time

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How do you relax?

It’s really quite simple. Anything that I do that allows me to immerse myself into it and forget the things that have been stressing me out are things that help me relax.

Video games, reading/writing, painting miniatures while listening to music or podcasts (lately it has been Legends of Avantris and their Once Upon A Witchlight campaign on YouTube) and of course sleeping.

Each of these activities takes my focus away from the stressors of life and gives me a good distraction so that I can relax, often in an almost pseudo-meditative state of mind.

Can’t give up words

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If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?

I don’t know how to answer this prompt. I think this is the toughest question yet!

As far as I can tell, there are no words I use regularly that I could even fathom giving up, and I say this because I do give up words from time to time.

Alright, I suppose if I want to humor the question and not take it too seriously, I could just say I give up the word “fuck” because it might encourage me to find other words to scream when I stub my toe or smack the ever loving shit out of my shin.

Let’s go with that and call it a day.

Do not hold a grudge

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Are you holding a grudge? About?

Last I checked, I wasn’t holding any grudges.

Some time in the last five years or so I reached a point where I came to terms with the idea of “letting someone live in your head rent free” and how it’s just not worth the energy to dwell on those kinds of things.

People may have wronged me in the past, but I’m not going to go out of my way to get back at them, and I’m certainly not going to let them do anything similar to me again. However, I’ve set myself up so that they don’t have those opportunities by simply keeping them at a distance or cutting them out (if it was serious enough) and moving on.

In my mind, whether in whole or in part, “Forgive and Forget” doesn’t always apply, and for those times where you know you won’t forget what happened, forgiveness can be optional. This is part of where I’ve come to terms with the previous idea. I don’t HAVE to forgive, but I also don’t need to expend extra energy (mentally and physically) to maintain a grudge if I know not to repeat the same mistake or let someone wrong me again because I didn’t “forget” what happened.

I have more important things to spend my energy and mental bandwidth on than a grudge.

A long way from home

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Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

For today’s prompt I had to do some double checking on relative distances from my childhood home versus my current home.

It turns out that the furthest I had been from home was from Colorado to Florida, which would be about 1,500 miles by air.

To this day, it is the only time I’ve been to Florida. My family liked to use the Christmas holiday to travel and spend time with extended family. Usually this was time spent with my Mom’s side of the family because my Dad is an only child. However, one Christmas was spent visiting my paternal grandparents in Florida.

The first few days or so we spent in a hotel and doing some sightseeing. Among all the places we visited were Disney World and Universal Studios, of course. The latter part of the vacation we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa so we could have Christmas dinner together and open gifts.

That trip would have been about 25 years ago, and the world has changed so much since then. Personally, I don’t know that I would go back. There are other places in the country, and the world, to visit if I have the chance.

A vision of an ideal home

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What does your ideal home look like?

My ideal home looks like any damn home that I can move into without significant work or extra costs upfront, while still being affordable in today’s stupid housing market.

That aside, I don’t know. I’ve seen so many homes online and liked different things about most of them that it’s hard to decide which things I liked most and how they would even fit together.

Starting from the outside, I’d love to have a big yard (both front and back) with a good amount of barrier trees around the edges and decent shade trees. Out here in South Dakota the wind gets nasty sometimes, and having barrier trees is especially important in winter when the snow is just blowing across the Great Plains. I’d also love it if there was some kind of lake front view from the back of the house, but that’s not a deal breaker. As for part of the exterior of the house, the back needs a covered patio of some kind, and it would be amazing if you could shut it up or screen it in (I recently saw something like this in some million dollar home in Colorado.) If the garage were detached I would want it to be large enough for some kind of workshop space.

Inside the house there would be only a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms. I would use one for an office space or maybe a hobby space depending on how the rest of the house turns out. If possible, that office space could also be lined with bookshelves and made into a little library. Also, have you seen those clips online of people building secret doors in their bookshelves? Definitely would want something like that, which could lead into a separate living room/entertainment space.

I shouldn’t forget to talk about the kitchen. Ideally, it would be spacious so that I can actually work in it when I’m trying to roll out pizza dough or something, and it needs a proper exhaust hood over the stove.

Okay, so a lot of the features I want are definitely a bit much, but some of them are more doable than others. Provided I find a basic home with enough space, I could probably add in the things I want myself and up the home value later. It’s just fun to think about this stuff sometimes.

Crying laughing

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What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

A very simple answer today.

Have you ever told a funny story, or cracked a really well timed joke, and everyone thought it was so funny that it just fills everyone with an infectious laughter? The kind of laughing that just doesn’t stop and leads to people crying because they’re laughing so hard?

Well, that’s generally what brings tears of joy to my eyes.

The reason I blog

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Daily writing prompt
Why do you blog?
View all responses

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.

Failed Interviews

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Daily writing prompt
Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses.
View all responses

An important part of any interview is getting permission first. So, technically, all interviews start with the same question.

Me: Can I interview you?

Friend: Not right now.

Me: Okay, thanks.

I asked several people and got roughly similar responses.

Me: Can I interview you for my blog?

Dog: *Stares blankly at me*

Me: *Staring back, politely waiting for a response*

Bit of a tough crowd today.

Me: Can I ask you a few questions?

Neighbor: You still have my mower.

Me: Right, about that…

Okay, so none of these are actually real occurrences, I just couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort to actually interview someone for a DAILY WRITING PROMPT. Personally, seems kind of silly, especially when it’s left so open to interpretation. My mind went in a few different directions for questions I could ask and each direction felt weird. Am I interrogating them? Am I trying to make casual conversation? Would they even be okay with me sharing their responses online?

So, no, I’m not going to interview someone.

Not even yourself?

No, not even myself. Hey, wait! Stop that!

Too late, you’ve already started.

Damnit…

So, how are things going?

THIS is how you choose to start an interview of yourself?

Well?

“Things” are going okay.

Is there anything you’d like to share?

Not particularly.

Sounds like we’ve met the criteria for an interview. Good job.

Alright, I’m done being silly. I hope you all have a great day!

Current overwhelming feelings

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How are you feeling right now?

I’ll keep today’s answer brief.

I try to maintain a steady balance of my emotions so that no particular ones take control, as everyone should be (even if you don’t realize it.)

However, I do feel acutely aware of most of them and what is causing or feeding into them.

Anticipation. Anxiety. Joy. Frustration. More that I won’t list directly.

I’m anticipating the long weekend, which feeds into the joy. I’m anticipating friends coming over tonight for games, which also feeds into joy. I’m also anxious about that game night tonight because of mental health concerns related to one of my friends and his life struggles of the last couple years. I’m frustrated that I can’t help him more than we already do.

There’s a little bit of hope stirring around in the mix because of upcoming opportunities that I won’t share here, at least not until they’re coming to fruition.

The dilemma of all of this is that I end up a little overwhelmed by all of them and I have to bounce around mentally managing them, but it kind of leads to a state of…..blah. That’s the best word I can think of right now. Maybe happy, but still blah.