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.)
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.
I gave this prompt a decent amount of thought last year when I answered this prompt, and I decided to go back and look it over to see if my thoughts had changed in that time.
Aside from one specific person I no longer talk to or associate with, the rest of my thoughts haven’t really changed! I know, that probably sounds like a bit of a cop out answer, but I wanted to add some additional thoughts this time around.
I’m getting into my late 30’s, I’ve been around the Sun many times at this point, met tons of people near and far that have all taught me different things, and what I wanted to throw out there is primarily for any younger readers who come across this post. If you’re struggling with personal relationships, people not sticking around long enough, or they’re just not that good for you (and you may not be able to see it) then let me tell you something.
Give it time. People will come and go from your life, and that is okay. In fact, that is MORE than okay, because as people go on to do different things, that just opens up space in your life to meet new people and expand your social horizons. Do it while you can, because from personal experience, the older you get, the harder it is to make new friends and identify those kinds of people that you can easily classify as a favorite.
Last year, I answered this prompt talking about real animals, and how I came to love otters as one of my absolute favorite animals. I also ended that post mentioning dragons and phoenixes as favorites, but how they were mythical creatures rather than real animals and that I would discuss them later.
Well, it’s time.
I don’t know that I can really recall WHEN I fell in love with dragons, not like how I can pinpoint it for otters, but they’ve been a favorite of mine for a really long time. Phoenixes I could probably be more precise, as I came around to those probably 15 years ago, partly because Fawkes from the Harry Potter franchise reminded me of their existence but mostly because I learned of how they are opposite dragons when it comes to mythology (and specifically in terms of Yin and Yang in Chinese culture).
For dragons, one of the things that really grabbed me is how prevalent they are throughout world history while maintaining cultural uniqueness. From the different magical elements (like fire and water) to the different physiology’s (two legs, four legs, or even no legs) there is just so much to consider on how they fit into the mythos of our own world at the same time that we utilize them as inspiration in the fictional worlds we create!
As for the phoenix, well, sadly, my knowledge is not as extensive. I know that they are primarily representative of the element of fire, and that they seemingly defy the cycle of life and death through the power of rebirth. I just like how they seem simpler and sit opposite dragons. That’s all, really.
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!)
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.)
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.
Something I started doing, and in hindsight I should have known better, is playing my daily NYT games (Wordle, Connections, etc.) while in bed if I happened to be awake after midnight. This has been a problem for several months now. I’ll go to bed late, can’t fall asleep, see the time, and play. Then my brain is awake because I’m trying to get a daily habit done early.
It also doesn’t help that I installed a scissor-arm mount near the head of my bed so I can hold my phone above me without fear of dropping it on my face. I really should take it down and put it back on my hobby desk and get my old tablet running again. (Then I just need to make sure my phone isn’t next to me when I lay down.)
Last time I answered this prompt I mentioned some things I like to make sure I know how to do (for the most part) like navigating. I’ll be taking a trip to a new city in a couple of months and I’ve already been looking up places and street names to try to familiarize myself with the area.
Some other things I think everyone should know include:
How to read instructions (and I mean REALLY read them)
How to take instructions from people via email and not just act like they know better (I’m looking at all you folks who like to email tech support/help desks and not follow instructions when they’re trying to help you appropriately diagnose your issue. I don’t care if you think you’re tech literate. Do as your told.)
Similarly, how to give and take criticism!
Too many people think they know better, and they wind up screwing themselves over or hurting other people.
When I think of “setbacks” I think of falling behind. Falling behind what or who? I don’t really know. The idea, though, is that there is a preconceived goal that you’re aiming for, even if you don’t consciously recognize what that goal is. Additionally, on a subtle level, there is a kind of time aspect to all of it. Keeping up or keeping pace in some kind of “race” to be good or successful. All of these things are external factors, though.
So, for myself, I stopped looking at these external factors as the hurdles for development. I’ve read it elsewhere in many places, but the thing that helped me break from these external factors is a quote from Matty Mullins that has been taken and reworded or expanded in different ways.
The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.
Matty Mullins
Taking those words to heart, and only focusing on how I did things before, makes it easier to look at those challenges and failures as opportunities instead of setbacks. It’s not the external factors that are important measures of progress, they just exist to provide ideas and direction. It’s what I actually try to achieve that matters, and if I fail then I can just step back, dissect and analyze, and try a different way to see if I do better. That’s how I try to frame it in my mind so that I can keep moving forward.
The Dragon's Grove 