Tag: Rambling

Failed Interviews

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

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

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.

Excited energy

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.
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I had to stop and really think hard about this prompt, digging through my memory to find something that might count as “excited”.

I realized that I don’t generally get excited about much of anything. That’s not to say I NEVER get excited, but it did call into question whether I fully understood what “excited” meant.

I’m guessing that, for some people (including myself), being excited entails some kind of high energy expressive outburst of joy and anticipation. That’s how I usually looked at it because the last time I felt THAT kind of emotional energy was, sadly, years ago when my roommate and I were opening booster packs for Magic: The Gathering. He had opened his last pack and was flipping through the cards, looking them over one at a time, and when he flipped to one of the last cards in the pack (the spot usually reserved for super rare cards) we saw a very shiny, very rare card that just happened to be one he was actually hoping to get. Our reaction? We were like teenagers again, jumping up and down for a moment, yelling excitedly about how he had actually managed to pull the card he wanted, and trying to awkwardly high five each other from close quarters, all at the same time. So, looking at the memory, and trying to think about other exciting moments or memories, I realized that maybe excitement can just be joyful anticipation of something without the externalized teenage-like energy.

Anyways, taking all that into account, I decided that I didn’t really have anything else more recent that would even come close to either of these “versions” of excitement, so I’ll stick to pulling rare pieces of cardboard.

An admirable profession

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What profession do you admire most and why?

Teachers.

Teachers do so much for the world, and yet they often don’t get the respect or support they deserve.

While parents are working to earn a living and “chase the carrot” of promised success, teachers are tasked with preparing the next generation for the future.

More often than not, teachers (and coaches or musical instructors, as some teachers wear multiple hats) will spend more time with a child than their own parents, which leads some parents treating them like glorified babysitters. If we look at it from that angle, teachers are massively underpaid, especially when they have to deal with unruly children who think it’s okay to tell their parents that a teacher was being mean and causing the parents to angrily confront a teacher because they believe their child can do no wrong. (Okay, that probably doesn’t happen TOO often, but it happens often enough that it’s a problem.)

Teachers have to go through a lot of work just to get started, and once they’re working, their job doesn’t end when the bell rings at 3:00PM (that’s when school typically ended for the day when I was growing up in Colorado) because they have to make sure they’re ready for the next day. They grade papers and do lesson planning. They work long hours. If they’re coaching on top of that then they sometimes work late into the night. All so that they can try to educate the next generation and prepare them to the best of their abilities for what is to come.

Joyful habits

Taylor Burian1 Comment

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

I have one particular habit lately that I will freely admit brings me joy because it stimulates my mind and strokes my ego just a tiny bit.

That habit is playing the free New York Times games (Wordle, Connections, and the Daily Mini Crossword) and then comparing the results with friends. Solving them provides the mental stimulation as a personal challenge to see how well I do, while sharing results with a few friends is the piece that strokes my ego (I usually do well with Connections compared to them) but also helps push each of us to do better.

One of my friends has been relatively faster than the rest of us at solving the Daily Mini, but she wasn’t at first. After about a week she really started to kick it into high gear and started to kick my ass. Which is great for me because it means I don’t get too big of an ego over something that is rather trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it also provides her with something small to prove to herself she can compete with the rest of us. Just a little boost in confidence, you know?

Which, honestly, helping my friends ultimately brings me some joy as well, so it all adds up.

A resurrection of dinosaurs

Taylor Burian1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?
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Thanks to the Jurassic Park/World movies there have been an increase in new hybridized dinosaurs that have become popular with children. Sadly, because they ARE fictitious, I won’t be “bringing back” one of those, which would be greatly disappointing to my nieces and nephews if I ever actually had the chance to do this.

As much as paleontologists may have discovered, there is no guarantee of knowing which species of dinosaur were aggressive. It’s all educated-guess work. Instead, I’d have to choose something that makes a little more sense. I wouldn’t want to bring back anything that could have been too aggressive and carnivorous. So I’d have to pick something that we can almost certainly define as herbivorous, and has features that might allow us to determine that it was more passive.

Regardless of most of that logic, I am going to pick something I liked as a kid.

I would pick the Triceratops. To the best of our knowledge, they were herbivores, they’re not stupidly huge (I mean, they’re still BIG, but definitely not 30 feet tall or something) and I just think they look cool.

Hypothetical Free Tickets

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Daily writing prompt
If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?
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I honestly don’t know. I read this prompt earlier in the day and nowhere specific came to mind. Even now, after most of the day, I still can’t think of a place I would want to go.

I did have the thought, though, that does it have to be two tickets just for me? Like, are they meant to be used as a round trip deal for a single person, or could I give one to a friend and just do one-way air travel to where ever it is we’re going and then figure out the return trip later?

Either way, I’m sure there would be stipulations, like the tickets have to be used within a certain amount of time after winning, can’t be used during typical travel blackout dates, and can only travel to somewhere within the contiguous United States. In which case, vacation to somewhere cool or amazing is off the table (which is why nowhere came to mind in the first place.)

If I could just sit on them for as long as I like that wouldn’t be bad. I could figure out where to go later.

Strategizing my health and well-being

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
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I don’t know that I have “strategies” associated to my health and well-being. I probably SHOULD, but I really don’t? That daily prompt from a couple weeks ago about strategies for comfort was definitely easier to answer.

I suppose you could probably count annual health checks with my doctor and optometrist. Having that as a routine has been helpful, but I haven’t always stuck to what my doctor has recommended (which I should be taking more seriously) and so every year is relatively the same outcome.

Trying to think through this prompt has me realizing I should set aside some time to review and make a better plan.

Current favorite game

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?
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I’ve brought it up a few times before, but the table top card game Magic: The Gathering is probably up there at the top of the list of my favorite games.

It’s easy to get into, although, in the long run, it’s also not exactly super affordable. I say that because you can buy a pre constructed deck (referred to as a precon) for a reasonable price, but if you want to expand your collection and have more than one deck or play multiple styles then you need to buy more and more cards.

All that being said, the main reason I enjoy the game so much is because of how many different ways there are to play. There are so many cards, with hundreds of new cards being added each year, which makes it possible to build and rebuild decks over and over again. The rules are relatively simple but there are a lot of different mechanics to choose from and play with/against. The simple approach is: draw cards, play lands/mana (kinda sorta like the Pokemon TCG, if you’re familiar), cast spells, and do things with those spells until you win. How you approach all of this can be determine by the cards you want to play. Some give you more draw power, others make it so you can reduce the random chance of draw what you need by just letting you search your deck for what you want (within reason), and some cards will activate effects or abilities that do a wide variety things to affect your opponents.

Through all of this, you can come up with very straightforward strategies to win, or you can develop convoluted plans that require several cards to even get your strategy off the ground. In that regard, it becomes almost like a puzzle. A puzzle against time and your opponents putting together their own puzzle. Get the right cards, do all the things. And yet, on top of the element of chance, there is also a certain amount of skill involved. Guessing what your opponent is planning, getting cards to offset their potential plans and protect yourself, remembering the cards in your deck versus what you think they might have in theirs. It can almost be like an incredibly complicated game of poker.

So many facets that can each make the game more interesting the more you choose to play. Unless you’re hyper competitive and build your deck for it, no game ever plays out the same as others.

Funky sleep schedule

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?
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My sleep is all over the place.

“Bedtime” is supposed to be between 10:00PM and 11:00PM but often times I’m awake later. Once I’m in bed, sleep usually hits anywhere between 11:30PM and 3:00AM. Obviously, that’s not good, especially when I typically have to be up by 7:30AM to get to work on time. Though, I usually make up for it (a smidge) by going home over lunch to take a nap. Sometimes, I just lay there, and other times it’s actually a very restful power nap.

That’s all during the week. Weekends are worse, sadly. Depending on the weekend’s priorities, I’ll still fall asleep at the same times, but waking up is a whole different story. If I have something important going on and it happens before Noon? Then I usually am awake an hour or two beforehand (unless I fell asleep REALLY late, and then it’s more like 30 minutes.) If I have nothing going? I’m most certainly sleeping in. I’ll TRY to be awake before Noon on those kinds of days, but it isn’t uncommon for me to sleep until 1:00PM.

It’s not a very healthy sleep cycle, but such is life.