I honestly don’t recall who my first crush was! Was it a celebrity crush from a movie I watched as a kid, or someone I knew in real life? It’s hard to say.

I know the stereotype for kids and teenagers who have celebrity crushes is to have posters/pictures all over your bedroom walls and such. I never did that.

So, must have been someone I knew in real life. The fact that I can’t remember them is probably because I was so preoccupied with playing video games and reading books (and no, I didn’t crush on anyone in those instead of celebrities) that my memories were full of mostly those things. I didn’t really waste much time crushing on anyone.

I’m a little torn on this one. Part of me wants to be lazy and not go anywhere, part of me wants to say “other countries? What about just the other States in my OWN country? There are so many to visit!” And yet another part of me that’s thinking of actual countries I’d like to visit.

In no particular order of desire or importance: Canada, Mexico, England, Japan. As much as I might like to go beyond those four, I’m really not interested in traveling abroad much. Two of those countries I have friends I can visit, and the other two are just because of things I enjoy that I wish I could experience in their culturally local environment.

As far as my comment regarding the number of States there are in the United States, I’ve lived in two of them, visited four or five others for significant reasons (maybe more) and passed through about as many with only stopping for gas just to reach the ones I visited. There are still at least 30 I haven’t even been to for any reason whatsoever.

I have only one life to live, only so much time, so traveling is limited. As much as I may want to do more than I already typically do, I’ll have to keep wanting and dreaming.

I happened to be awake when the clock ticked over to Midnight and this prompt became available. I looked at it briefly, couldn’t think of anything within a few seconds, and then proceeded to ignore it while trying to go to sleep.

Sleeping on it didn’t help.

Reading it again this morning and trying to think about how I perceive myself is not an easy mental exercise. I don’t want to go so far beyond humility and self depreciation that I land in “there’s nothing I like about myself so I can’t pick a favorite” territory, and I don’t want to brag about myself. This is going to sound weird (because of the whole writing blog posts and sharing my mind for the world) but I don’t like being or making myself the center of attention regardless of good or bad. This makes it hard to be self reflecting and pick something I like. I’ve heard that we are our own worst critic, so maybe that explains a bit there.

So, what I did instead was scan through the titles of my blog posts from the last six or seven months. That’s over 200 posts. I picked through a couple to remind myself of things I liked and had stronger thoughts/opinions on (typically the longer posts) and found that I am still completely stuck against a mental block of picking something I could easily declare that is my favorite thing about myself.

So I’m going to just throw something out there. I like puzzles and escape room type games and the like. I like complexity and creativity in games, especially in Magic: The Gathering. If there’s one thing I THINK I could say is my favorite thing about myself, it’s that I like to think I’m clever and/or creative, but I don’t like to talk/brag about my exploits.

This has been a weird post to write.

The majority of people in my generation are likely not going to achieve the “American Dream” style of retirement that our parents and grandparents talked about and strove for.

So, with that in mind, how I WANT to retire may not be perfectly feasible. I want to be able to retire and not have to work. I want to have the time to read anything and everything, work on my hobbies, play my ever growing backlog of games, and not worry about money or my health.

Where I want to retire may not really matter, because my hobbies are primarily indoor activities. I could retire in the cold north and probably be just fine. Although, I would probably prefer somewhere warmer because then I could sit outside and read in the shade for several hours.

That’s the dream, anyways.

I don’t think I have anything older than myself that I use on a daily basis.

So, my answer is “my body” because it’s the one thing I will own for my entire life.

And if you’re the kind of person who, like me, knows just enough random, useless trivia and made the connection in your mind to the “ship of Theseus” example, then stop right there. I thought about it for about two seconds and then threw it away to run with my answer regardless.

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just do a quick Google search on “human body ship of Theseus”)

Happy Saturday everyone!

Given that I try to write these posts in the morning before work or after I check my email, not much happens before I wake up nor within the 90 minutes that follow my arrival at the office. So, the most notable things or actually the least notable.

I woke up.

I got to work despite minor inconveniences.

I wrote these words.

Maybe if I had struggled to answer this prompt (or really cared to find out what the day holds) I would have waited to see if anything notable or exciting happens before sitting down to write out this response. However, I have a schedule to stick to if I want to maintain my habits, so you get this totally useless post!

Thanks for taking the time to read what (oftentimes) amounts to just a stream of consciousness writing exercise. Have a great day!