Tag: Respect

Being a part of a community

Taylor Burian2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What do you do to be involved in the community?
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Truth be told, I don’t do a whole lot to be involved in my community at any level. I’m very introverted by nature, so I don’t go out. I don’t typically participate in activities outside the home. I go to work, I go to the grocery store and sometimes the gas station, and I come home. Regardless of how long any of that takes, I show people kindness and respect as much as possible so that I’m at least putting good out into the world even if I’m not being an active participant in the community.

There are rare occasions that I do go somewhere outside of the norm. Lately, it has been to my nephew’s soccer games. Where ever they are, I try to go, and in those cases I interact more with strangers, but we’re all there for the same reason, we cheer on the kids and support them in doing something they enjoy, so we’re not focused explicitly on actively interacting with one another since our focus is on the fields where the kids are playing.

That’s about it lately. I should maybe get out a bit more.

Words to live by

Taylor Burian2 Comments

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

So many people throughout history have provided wise words that hold some measure of “magic” that makes them resonate with others. There are many choices, from simple sentences to long form narratives, that we can choose from. When I first read this prompt I couldn’t decide where I wanted to go with my answer because I have four different sources of inspiration, but I think I’ll share them all with you in the order of most consistent impact they have had on my life.

The first one is simple and incredibly important. One that I think should resonate with everyone, and if you’ve watched the recent Fallout series from Amazon then you’ve heard it. It’s “The Golden Rule”. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Now, I try to remind myself of this every day, because I believe there is so much truth to those words, however, I take it a step further. I don’t want to let people walk all over me or push me around. I won’t strike first, because I wouldn’t want to be hit, but I won’t let someone who WOULD strike first have that power over me. I won’t show them unnecessary kindness or respect if I can clearly see they mean to harm me or have otherwise ill intent. I show them the kind of treatment I would except for myself if I were in their shoes. I’ll leave it at that and let you all mull it over.

The second one is just as short and simple, if a slight bit fanciful. It comes from the game Tales of Symphonia, spoken by the character Kratos. Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality. I don’t necessarily remind myself of this day in and day out like The Golden Rule, but I like to remind myself of this when I feel like I need to take a leap of faith. It falls in the same realm as “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and all the other phrases that sound similar.

The third and fourth ones I’ll lump together more so because they’re too long to contain in a simple blog post. Third one is very much like the second one and is probably much more familiar to many people. It’s The Man in the Arena from Teddy Roosevelt. Regardless of his history and controversies from his lifetime, there is a measure of truth to his words. I’ll let you choose to look it up so that I can move right into the fourth one from Bruce Lee. I find his essay The Passionate State of Mind to be a wonderful window into the minds and souls of individuals. Self-awareness, ego, pride, self-worth. How we see and value ourselves as compared to others. Well, I keep articles bookmarked for both of these sources of inspiration so that at any given time, if I feel the need to, I can refer back to them. I would encourage you all to look into them and see how they resonate with you.

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.

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.)

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.

A question I hate

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What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

I’m not sure how anyone reading this will react or what their opinion of me will be afterwards, but if I were worried about that I wouldn’t be sharing.

One question I hate that immediately came to mind after reading the prompt:

“How can I make it up to you?”

Depending on the situation/circumstances I have different reactions to this kind of question, but they are all based in the same area of my mind. I can forgive some and let it slide, but those situations are few and far between for when the question actually gets used.

I’ve had “friends” that borrowed things from me, and although they did ultimately return the item, they misused it in the exact way I told them not to. Sound too vague? Here’s a story.

I was in my early 20’s and just out of college trying to find a job. TRYING to get out from under my parents. I ended up moving in with some friends when one of them bought a fixer upper house. Cheap rent and utilities, and the house was livable regardless. One of these friends wanted to borrow my laptop. I said “sure, but no looking at porn.” I was very clear about that because I had a sneaking suspicion that they would.

Why would you lend them your laptop in the first place if you were suspicious of them? That’s kind of weird.

I had reasons to doubt their intentions but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they obviously did misuse my laptop, but they thought they were being clever and used one of the web browsers I had installed but never used, thinking I wouldn’t check it. They were wrong.

I calmly confronted them, no yelling, no anger, just pure fact. I told them I’m not going to lend them my laptop again because they did the one thing I asked them not to.

If you’re this far into the post and thinking I’m overreacting, I applaud you for not “yucking someone else’s yum” as a Canadian friend of mine would put it. Regardless, the concern is less about the content in this case, and more about compromising the security of my laptop. Porn sites used to have a notorious reputation for trying to install shit in the background. Whether that’s still true 10+ years later I don’t know and don’t really care.

ANYWAYS! I told them no more and they asked the dreaded question that is inspiring this post.

“How can I make it up to you?”

In my mind, at that time, if you had to ask that question then you don’t understand the situation you have put yourself into. Breech of trust, and in an immaterial way that can’t really be redeemed because it’s not like you broke something and can just replace it. If you had to ask that question then you don’t respect the situation you have put ME into. Asking me to try to think of a way for them to redeem themselves in my eyes was almost LAZY on their part because to me it meant they didn’t want to have to put effort into thinking about what they did wrong and the lesson that should be learned.

As I recall the situation, I gave them a similar but abbreviated answer along with a simple “You can’t.”

In that situation I don’t think there was anything they could have done. That’s why I responded the way they did.

I know this question sometimes gets asked in response to honest mistakes, but as I said before these situations are rare. At least in my experience.

Fate and a Universal Destiny

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Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in fate/destiny?
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I’m not a religious individual, so this post won’t be laced with theological philosophy or anything of the sort.

But when it comes to fate and/or destiny, I do have a perspective on it that I feel is worth sharing because I don’t know that many people at all think in this way.

Under the preconceived ideas of Fate and Destiny (with the capital letters) being some grand predetermined order of events that are guaranteed to happen regardless of anyone else’s desires, I don’t believe in that. I’m not fond of the idea of a “higher being” having that kind of absolute control (for reasons I won’t go into just yet.) I DO believe that you could consider there to be some aspect of fate/destiny that is outside of our control on an individual level.

Everything we do every day of our lives has impact or meaning, whether we think so or not. I’m not talking about the scale of something like “the butterfly effect” but it is similar. Every decision you make, conscious or not, changes the world around you, and therefore, the world around everyone else. The same is true in reverse, and so it goes on back and forth like that forever. It’s impossible to know every little detail of what kind of chain reaction you can cause by slamming on your brakes or slicing that golf shot really bad despite knowing you are off your game today. Every choice. Cause and effect.

If you understand the idea behind all of that, then you have some idea of where I’m going with this. There IS some kind of destiny or fate to this world based purely on the fact that SOMETHING happens SOMEWHERE because of something else that happened. It doesn’t matter if you can think one step ahead or twenty on what possible things can happen, but if you can imagine it happening then it likely will happen that way if you follow through on that initial choice.

So, with that in mind, take a moment to think about the things you do. The things that other people around you do every day. Which direction the influence goes. Throw that out the window, because in the grand scheme of the Universe none of it mattered because things “happen for a reason” and you can’t fully control everything in your life.

Don’t think too hard about it, just live your life and be kind in the process. Even if you aren’t thinking about it, whatever small kindness you provide can go a long way and it very likely cost you nothing. You can put that kindness into the world and help change its destiny (or not because something someone else did might cancel it out, but you can live with the knowledge that you did good and put that into the world.)

Just be kind, and fate/destiny will unfold as it will regardless.

Bloganuary 30th: Add another to the complaint box

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Bloganuary writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
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This information might be out of date since I last worked at a fast food burger chain about 16 years ago, but one of things I learned (when getting ServSafe Certified and taking corporate training exams) was the disparity between bad service and good service. When a customer has a bad experience somewhere they typically share that experience with seven or more family/friends/acquaintances as opposed to a person who had an exceptionally good experience sharing with an average of just three people. Not even just a regular good experience where you get exactly the kind of service you expect, but the kind of service that went above and beyond expectations! Again, these numbers might not be completely accurate anymore, but the point stands. Bad experiences yield more complaints.

So with that in mind I’d like to take a moment to say that I generally don’t complain, and I don’t go out of my way to complain about poor service unless it was REALLY BAD. The reason for this is because I’ve been in that situation. Sometimes the stars just line up for a cosmically shitty day of work. I can take a step back and think about the little details that add up to cause that experience. This is something a lot of people don’t seem to do, and that extends beyond the customer service experience to the thing I really wanted to address in today’s post. Critical thinking.

The thing I seem to complain about most is the lack of critical thinking that seems to happen more and more these days. People making snap judgements and instantly being harsh. People who fall for misinformation and help spread it further. Like those stupid memes of math problems that lead to people fighting over the answer because some of them forgot how to utilize order of operations. In those moments, when something seems off and people are bickering back and forth over what is right, that is the time to step back and apply a little more critical thinking. Why are we fighting over a silly and irrelevant math problem on social media? How are some people arriving at a different answer? Which all leads into the next thing that I complain about most.

People lack the ability to stuff their ego and pride and admit when they are wrong. Seriously, when faced with overwhelming proof and easily verifiable/testable logic, why double down on being wrong? I don’t want to dig into that too much, because I don’t want to try and research the psychology behind people refusing to admit their wrongness.

I also don’t want to keep ranting about this because it will just irritate me for the rest of the day.

Networking as a Broadcaster

Taylor Burian

I’ve spent a little time here and there over the last few months just kind of mulling over what it means to “network” as a broadcaster. Quite honestly it’s just as complicated as it is simple.

At a high level, in the simplest form, networking is just talking to people and making connections or friends. That being said, that’s also why it’s so complicated.

Social interaction in itself is not easy for everyone. It comes with its own set of Do’s and Don’ts, taboos, faux pas, etcetera. Do be genuine. Be yourself. Don’t be awkward, or too overbearing. You get the idea. In most day to day social interactions these kinds of things may have very little impact on your longterm standing with people because you don’t see them very often, or maybe only once, and as such you don’t generally care about the result of the interaction. Networking is a little different. I feel like it adds an extra layer of complexity.

When you’re trying to network you have to keep in mind that the people you’re talking to are going to be around more frequently, and that the impression you give does matter. So when you do start looking around for people to connect with, you should be looking at things you have in common and how well you’ll get along. It’s almost like shopping around to find a new friend, or trying to assemble a dating site profile of someone else. It gets a bit tough and awkward, but if you want to succeed at what you’re doing, especially as a broadcaster, you need to do it. Just don’t do it the wrong way, acting entitled like they owe you something for spending your time talking to them. Their time is just as valuable.

Respect can go a long ways.

Obsverations on Broadcaster Etiquette

Taylor Burian1 Comment

Over the course of my time spent streaming and interacting with other streamers I’ve noticed different things about how each of them acts or handles specific kinds of situations.

I’m sure all of these have been called out before, some more than others, but I felt like offering my own take. Let’s start with the Bad Etiquette.

The Faux Supporter

For a long while I’d only ever seen others mention this kind of behavior. Until recently. I’ve now personally experienced having someone come in to my chat, say something along the lines of “Hey, just wanted to drop in and say hi and show some support before I went Live.” and then they leave just as quickly. I had only seen this individual in my chat and in friends chats a handful of times over the course of maybe a month. We talked and interacted at least a little bit each time, but never enough to really form a connection or be considered on amicable terms. Then they pull that move and I was just baffled. Why? Did this person not actually understand what ‘support’ meant? They literally Grandpa Simpson’d me. Thankfully, I haven’t seen this individual since that incident so I’ve had time to think over how I would further respond to that kind of action, but it’s just as irritating as it is baffling to me.

The Linker

This one is interesting, and easily dealt with. This person can be either a broadcaster or a regular viewer that doesn’t stream at all. They both do the same thing, but oftentimes the intent behind the action is different. In the case of the broadcaster what they do is for exposure and/or bragging. They take a clip of their stream and try to post it in another streamers chat. Unless they’re on good terms with that streamer, they’re usually easily blocked. No posting links either because of AutoMod, a moderator bot, or a regular mod doing what they do best. I still see it happen from time to time, but it’s usually easy to ignore because of how easily it’s handled. That doesn’t diminish what it says about them though.

The Donater

I feel like these individuals are more often just throwing away money. Sure, they might be monetarily supporting another streamer, but their intent is clear as day. Donating money just to have your name and message flash across the screen for people to see. The message usually contains the same kind of content. Things that call out they’re a streamer too and want to be noticed. (We get it, it’s hard to get viewers and build your community, but this isn’t the right way.)

So, unless you’re in a stream where it’s common practice to have someone drop a donation to recommend a Host or Raid candidate, you might typically see more of these come through from the broadcaster themselves rather than a friend of their channel.

The Raid Leader

I don’t see this one very often anymore, nor always in a poor light, but I have seen it used terribly before. In this case, the broadcaster incites their viewers to go raid another streamers channel without actually invoking the Raid function. This particular behavior can have a couple of different results based on the intent of the broadcaster, or the lack of control over their community.

The first one is toxic flooding. A broadcaster is, ultimately, the one responsible for having built up the community they see in their chat, and if they let it be a semi-lawless mess then it ends up being toxic and chaotic. So when they start looking into another streamer (who may be live at the same time) they may be inadvertently inviting their own viewers to go flood the unsuspecting target of their investigation. This can be detrimental to the recipient streamer if they haven’t experienced it before. A sudden influx of viewers gets their hopes up, only to be brought back down quickly when they realize how toxic they are, and suddenly they aren’t enjoying themselves anymore. It takes away from their experience of streaming and leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

The second version, and arguably the worst one, is when the broadcaster themselves ACTUALLY calls for their viewers to go blow up the other streamers channel. This one is worse because it emboldens their viewership and supports the idea that being toxic is okay. (There’s actually another version of this behavior, but I’ll explain it further down.)

The final one I’ll touch on in this category of behavior is related to the first. The broadcaster might not be trying to call attention to another streamer regardless of how they encountered each other, but their community is still going to have individuals who go on an unsolicited raid once they figure out who it is.

All of these raid behaviors are a product of the broadcaster’s personality and the way they’ve built up their community.

I probably missed an example of something in there somewhere but I still have more to go over.

Now let us go over some of the positive behaviors I’ve seen when it comes to broadcaster etiquette.

The Gifter

This isn’t totally new, but has seen an increase lately. Ever since Twitch implemented the ability to gift multiple subscriptions at once, it has become easier for people to support their favorite communities and streamers. In this case, the broadcaster wants to help another streamer out, so they drop a large number of gift subscriptions on them. This gives a positive mental boost to the recipient streamer and can help their community feel more involved. I’ve seen this behavior paired up with another one I’ve already alluded to above, but suffice to say it can be used to a greatly positive affect.

The Raid Leader (again)

This category on the positive side? You bet! This is actually the one that inspired me to write this entry at all.

The Raid Leader can be a positive, supportive force as well. I’ve seen it first hand when a broadcaster acts with good intent in this category of behavior. The second reason above in the negative version can be flipped on its head. The broadcaster incites their community to go raid another live channel for the express purpose of helping them gain exposure at no cost to them. They wind up sharing followers, bolstering the total number of the recipient to help them grow their community. Often times, though, it isn’t some random streamer they found but was one who they were previously familiar with.

A subset of this behavior is when they ARE looking for a legitimate Raid candidate because they themselves are ending stream for the time being. I was recently part of one of these situations on the recipient side as a channel moderator. Someone that was a common viewer and friend of both channels managed to pull some strings with the raiding broadcaster and I had a feeling I knew who it was (and they privately confirmed it for me almost immediately, making me promise not to tell. Don’t worry friend, I still haven’t told anyone it was you.) So it got me curious and I decided to look at the end of the VOD from the incoming streamer. This where it really struck to write this blog post. They said two things that I respected greatly. “Please don’t talk about me or my channel in there,” followed immediately by “we’re going in there to support them.” Respect where it’s due when a Partnered streamer says something like that going into a smaller stream.

I mentioned earlier that The Gifter behavior can be paired up with another. Here’s that case. A positive force of support, when The Raid Leader is also being The Gifter. They go in with their community on a legitimate Raid at the end of their own stream and shortly after hanging out for a bit they drop a large number of gift subscriptions to viewers. They’re attempting to bolster the recipient streamers community numbers but also somewhat enforce that increase.

I think I’ve ranted long enough, and I’m sure I missed some other great examples of both negative and positive broadcaster etiquette, but I want to end on a simple note.

At the end of the day, it is all about Respect. Respecting each other, and ourselves. If you have bad behaviors and etiquette (or provide an environment for toxicity to develop) as a broadcaster then you don’t really deserve respect for it. If you truly support one another in a positive way, and show respect for each others effort, then you deserve respect in return.

Do your best to stay awesome out there.