Tag: Rambling

Awesome secret skills

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

There are so many skills and abilities that people have dreamed up that are completely amazing, and I go back and forth wishing I had any of them.

Flight? Speed? Strength? Standard comic book hero powers like that come to mind, but then I’m reminded of the abilities that characters had on the show Heroes.

I think if there was just one I wish I could have it would be that “empathy” ability that Peter had on Heroes. Then I could have access to so many others! That would be incredible. Although, I don’t recall if he got to keep any of the mimicked abilities or if it was a temporary thing. Either way, it would still be awesome.

The best kind of weather

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What is your favorite type of weather?

I’m kind of an oddball about the weather. Seasons and locations are important to me when I think about the different kinds of weather I like. I like living in a place where I can experience all four seasons because that’s the only way to truly appreciate just how different the same kinds of weather can be.

Starting with Winter where I live, you can have a temperature range from far below zero up to the 50’s (though that isn’t too common.) Because of this wide range we can experience cold weather with different kinds of snow. Tiny snowflakes carried by a fierce wind that pelt the face. Huge snowflakes on a nearly windless day that fill the air like a gentle, feathery blanket. One of these is obviously less comfortable to be out in, but both can put you in the mood to stay inside wrapped in warm blankets with hot cocoa and a good book, all nice and cozy like.

Spring and Summer offer rain, hail, and tornadoes. Definitely not fond of hail and tornadoes, so skipping over those to rain. Rain can be just like snow! Not just because both are made of water but because they can fall in the same amounts and sizes of droplets/flakes. The only difference in that particular regard is speed. Rain falls much faster. Tiny raindrops, sprinkling across things like a fine mist. Huge raindrops that can threaten us with flash floods and make it almost feel like you’re walking through a swimming pool. I mentioned temperature for Winter, so I should touch on that here as well. Cold and hot rain is a thing to consider when deciding if it’s your favorite kind of weather, alongside the general temperature of the season. Warm rain on an 80-90°F day is different from the same rain on a day in the 100’s.

Anyways, none of that really answers the question. What IS my favorite kind of weather? I understand that bugs are a part of nature and we need them for the cycle of life, but Winter beats Spring and Summer because there are no bugs. So, that’s where my generally favorite kind of weather is! I mentioned those huge, pillowy snowflakes before and I find it to be a calm, relaxing kind of weather event. I like how it makes the world feel a little quieter, more peaceful and serene. If I know I have to be out and about for the day then I like the days where that snow doesn’t stick to the ground too much and just melts fairly quickly. It adds another layer to the overall experience. Factor in time of day and lighting, and now you’ve got yet another layer! Like those Christmas movies where the snow and the light make everything seem magical.

That’s the kind of weather I enjoy most because I can go out in it and experience it, or choose to stay inside and be cozy.

A wonderful teacher

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Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
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This is going to sound a little weird. I don’t know that I could qualify a teacher in my life who had the most influence on me. However, I can say that I know a teacher who qualifies beyond that on the influence she has had on the lives of my family and friends.

Roughly 20 years ago, when my family still lived in Colorado, Kelly Gibson was my teacher, and my sister’s teacher before me. She taught English and Theater. Sadly, I had other English teachers, so I had the amazing chance to have her as a teacher for one Theater and Improv class instead.

As I recall, my sister had started participating in theater before high school, and my mom helped with costumes and makeup, so if anyone could share more information about Kelly it would be them. If this leaves you wondering why I would bring her up as an influential teacher despite my limited time with her, it’s because of the reach she has managed to develop in the years since.

If you know who Guy Kawasaki is, you may have heard him talk with Kelly on his podcast Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People. If not, you can listen to the particular episode on Spotify here. (If you don’t use Spotify, I’m sorry, but you can look it up by title “Kelly Gibson: The Real World of a Public School Teacher”.)

So, while she may not have had the level of influence on me that I may have hoped for when compared to the time my sister got with her, you can hopefully tell just how influential she is even if I don’t have anything to provide as an answer to the prompt.

Never enough time for hobbies

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What do you wish you could do more every day?

Hobbies are a great way to pass the time. Unfortunately, we live in an age where work is a necessity and it can take up a lot of time. Not just with the actual work, but also getting ready for and traveling to work. Oh, and responsibilities like taking care of your home, cleaning, feeding yourself and/or your family. All those “pesky little activities” that suck up your time.

Truthfully, I don’t mind all those “extra” responsibilities outside of my desire to spend oodles upon oodles of time on hobbies. I often enjoy most of those things well enough as it is anyway.

The problem is that I have a bunch of hobbies that I bounce around from one to another. Reading, playing video games, writing, Magic: The Gathering, painting miniatures, putting together those wooden constructions that come with instructions as if they were like LEGO’s. I just want to do all these things all the time! Sadly, I have to pick and choose, day by day, which ones I do.

Oh well, maybe if I get to retire someday, then I’ll get to do more of each.

Wanting a new tattoo

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What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

I only have one tattoo, a dragon on my left side, and I have plans for it to someday have a friend on my right side.

The backstory of my dragon tattoo (and the eventual phoenix that I want) starts with my Dad. He got one a long time ago (we’re talking nearly 50 years ago) when he was in the military. Well, my siblings and I all wanted to get tattoos eventually, and my younger brother was the first to get his dragon tattoo around 10 or so years ago, which spurred on our sister to get hers not long after. I would get mine a couple years later.

Unfortunately, as old tattoos do when they age, my Dad’s tattoo faded a little and the lines blurred together. So, when it came time for my sister to make the move to get hers done, she took a picture of Dad’s dragon tattoo to use as a base. She used her photo editing skills, traced what she could of it, and tried restoring it enough for her tattoo.

I did something similar. I have a friend who went to school for video game art and design, so I commissioned him to do roughly the same thing my sister did, except that he would be allowed to add a bit of his own style and flair. After I had taken the redesigned dragon and gotten my ink done, I went back to the same friend and commissioned the phoenix that I want to go on my other side. (The idea for the style matching side tattoo actually came from my younger brother. He has his dragon on the back of one of his calves and a style matched unicorn on the other.)

The refreshed art
The tattoo I have
The tattoo I want

There are definitely other tattoos I’d like to get someday, but they’re still only ideas and nothing as complete as these two pieces.

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.)

Cross-country modes of transportation

Taylor Burian2 Comments

You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?

I feel like the “or” is incredibly limiting, especially considering the scale of the contiguous 48 states. Honestly, who would select a bike to cross over a couple thousand miles?

Okay, I’m sure there are some people who would choose the bike, but not me.

I’ve crossed large spans of the country by plane, and it’s wildly different than by car, but I’ve only ever traveled across a max of four or five states by car, all in the western half. I’ve also had to travel from one side of the state to the other by bus, and while that trip was interesting to be able to see the environment around us without worrying about the road, that trip wasn’t entirely pleasant.

If I had to pick just one mode of transportation for a cross-country trip it would be by train. I’ve always wanted to take a train and watch the sprawling countryside. Sitting in a private room, reading and writing, eating in the dining car. All those kinds of things that you see in movies and TV shows that make it seem incredibly appealing.

Unfortunately it is very cost prohibitive, especially because I would want a sleeper unit.

Well, in the event I somehow pull it off or the costs come way down, I do have an idea of how I would go about it.

The first place to start would be in the northeast and traveling south along the Atlantic coast. Then I would take a westbound route, hopefully to Washington or Oregon, and then repeat the southbound travel along the Pacific.

I’ve looked up some of the numbers previously, and I would likely need a solid month to accomplish the full trip, maybe more depending on availability.

I wonder if I could work from the train so I can save PTO? That would be interesting.

A day off

Taylor Burian1 Comment

Some days I see the daily writing prompt and just don’t feel like I’m going to have a solid answer, no matter how much time I take to think it through. So, rather than struggle to write it out I’ll just take a day off to let my brain rest.

If you feel like this, take a day off. We can’t always be “on” day after day. That’s how we experience burnout.

Affirmations and Coping

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
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Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional, nor a professional of any medical field at all, so these thoughts are my own. Right, wrong, or indifferent.

Once again, I was up late enough to see this prompt at the turn of midnight giving myself time to think and digest how I wanted to respond. I put my phone aside, laid my head down on my pillow, and started running through potential openers and content.

The entire workday later, I have forgotten every word I thought up which means I get to stare at my monitor, falling in and out of my usual daydream like daze, as I try to start over.

Emotions, and positive/negative feelings are complicated and complex. No matter how we try to dissect and understand them, boiling them down to singular words to describe our feelings in as simple a form as possible, there is always the underlying complex nature of emotions. How we respond to them, handle and control them, will vary from person to person based on personal life experiences.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into this subject, but I wanted to at least address the fact that I have different measures for handling different emotions and negative feelings.

Anger: I try not to let things get to me. I do not anger easily, and as I’ve gotten older (and hopefully wiser) I have reached a point where it is really difficult to anger me. Someone makes a mistake that directly impacts me, hurting or setting me back, and instead of flying off the handle I take a moment to recognize as many factors as possible that led to current situation. I recognize that dropping everything to get angry, to expend that kind of energy, doesn’t fix things and only serves to hinder me. That being said, if someone REALLY crosses a line, to the point of hurting and outright disrespecting me, my family and friends, I can and will let the anger rise a little bit because sometimes I need to get a point across to prevent that line being crossed again.

Frustration and Helplessness: I’ve decided to lump these two together because I feel they go hand in hand. I try not to let myself fall into situations that could lead to frustrating outcomes by recognizing my limits and the risks involved. Preemptive measures, if you will, learned and earned through life. Although I am not very religious I do have a response for those times when preemptive measures fail, and that is the Serenity Prayer. You don’t need to be incredibly devout to recognize the simplistic power of an affirmation built on the Serenity Prayer. If you don’t know the Serenity Prayer, here you go. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.” I do not let myself get frustrated and feel helpless when things don’t work out or something fails. I take a step back to recognize that there may have just been something I couldn’t control, and move forward by reminding myself of the intent of that prayer.

I’m realizing that I could probably go on and on, and this post would become a self-help book, so I’ll leave it there because I feel like those are the most prominent negative feelings I usually have to deal with. I know I could share about things like sadness and depression, hate and fear, but a lot of times those are all handled under similar measures to anger, frustration, and helplessness. I feel those things, I recognize what caused them, and find a way to pull myself out of them so that I don’t do something stupid. I always want to be moving forward, and hopefully someone who stumbles across this post can find something that helps them move forward as well.

Lose yourself to the daydream

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What activities do you lose yourself in?

If daydreaming counts, then that is one thing I can lose myself into every single day. I even had such a problem with it as a kid in elementary school that it got me in trouble. I can space out in seconds, the world in front of my eyes blurring and going out of focus as I let my imagination run wild.

Usually when this happens I’m thinking about hypothetical situations and potential responses, or trying to think of new ideas for writing.

It took a long time but I’ve more or less gotten it under control. I try to use it only when I need to give my brain a break from work or if I get stuck, instead of just letting myself daydream out of boredom.

Otherwise, if I’m not losing myself to daydreaming, it’s my hobbies. I can totally lose myself for hours playing video games, reading a book, painting miniatures, or building new Commander decks for Magic: The Gathering. All of those activities have resulted in very late nights even when I have work the next day. It’s not uncommon for me to go until 2:00 AM because of these things. I’ve even recently caught myself doing it playing an early access survival crafting game called Nightingale. I look at the clock, see that it’s getting late and tell myself just fifteen more minutes. Over and over. Until the next thing I know it’s 1:38 AM and I should have been in bed a few hours before.

So, if I’m not preoccupied with my hobbies, I’m daydreaming. Some days I wonder how I get anything done.