Tag: Writing

Bloganuary 30th: Add another to the complaint box

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
View all responses

This information might be out of date since I last worked at a fast food burger chain about 16 years ago, but one of things I learned (when getting ServSafe Certified and taking corporate training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.

Bloganuary 23rd: Doing things for fun

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
List five things you do for fun.
View all responses

Personally, everyone should have a hobby, and preferably a creative one if possible.

Unfortunately, while I do have a handful of things I do on a regular basis for fun, I also have a penchant for dabbling in new things. Maybe it’s just because I’m looking for something else to add to my skill sets or list of substitute hobbies.

Anyways, the five things I like to do for fun.

On the creative side of things I like to paint miniatures for tabletop games, although I’m slowly running out of mini’s because I’ve forbidden myself from buying more games that we haven’t played. So I’m also working on 3D printing things to paint. I also enjoy putting together those 3D wooden objects, like the ones made and sold by UGEARS. They’re kind of like adult LEGO’s at this point, except permanent and not transformable.

On the non-creative side, I like to read and play video games for fun, especially sci-fi and fantasy stuff. I would separate out puzzles but most of the time those are part of the video games category because of the medium I choose to do puzzles in, such as the game Escape Simulator which is designed around the category of Room Escape games. Not to sound I actually started playing them probably sixteen years or so ago when they were still Flash-based and were a big thing coming up in Japan.

There is kind of a middle ground between the two, creative and non-creative, is Magic: The Gathering. The reason being is that on the non-creative side I get to consume media. Lots of reading of the cards and the backstories. On the creative side I get to flex my brain a bit and try to figure out how to play with new cards and new mechanics of the game. Creating a cohesive deck with lots of synergy between the cards to try to find win conditions is a lot of fun and often takes up a lot of time when I get the itch to build a new Commander Deck.

That’s all I’ve got for major hobbies that I do for fun. I have some other things I probably could add to the list but I don’t do them as frequently so they’re not as important. Still, it helps to make sure I’m never without something to do with my free time.

Bloganuary 21st: Origin of a name – Taylor

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
View all responses

My first name is fairly common, or at least very commonly known courtesy of Taylor Swift, but the etymological background might be lost on the current generations.

Per the website Find My Past:

What does the name Taylor mean?

“An Anglo-French occupational surname, Taylor is thought to have arrived through the Norman occupation, derived from the Old French ‘tailleur’ (cutter of cloth) or English ‘tailor’. The surname Taylor is common across the British Isles (fourth most common in the UK overall – fifth most common in England) and other countries traditionally colonised by the British, though far less common in Ireland (where it mostly exists only in Northern Ireland – potentially brought over by English and Scottish settlers). Taylor can sometimes be found as an anglicised version of the German word ‘Schneider’, a direct translation of the same term.”An Anglo-French occupational surname, Taylor is thought to have arrived through the Norman occupation, derived from the Old French ‘tailleur’ (cutter of cloth) or English ‘tailor’. The surname Taylor is common across the British Isles (fourth most common in the UK overall – fifth most common in England) and other countries traditionally colonised by the British, though far less common in Ireland (where it mostly exists only in Northern Ireland – potentially brought over by English and Scottish settlers). Taylor can sometimes be found as an anglicised version of the German word ‘Schneider’, a direct translation of the same term.”
– Findmypast.co.uk

All I was ever concerned with is that it was from the English occupation, but the fact that it has ties to the similar spelled/pronounced French occupation makes sense.

Unfortunately, I am not very ambitious with cloth, thread, and needle, so I don’t actually concern myself with the occupation. That doesn’t mean I’m averse to sewing, though, because as an adult I have very much needed to fix up some clothes when I didn’t have the money to buy new.

So there you have it, a quick and dirty post with little extra exposition from me because the information already exists elsewhere on the Internet for any and everyone to read if they were so curious.

Bloganuary 20th: Dreams of going pro as an author

Taylor Burian1 Comment
Bloganuary writing prompt
What’s your dream job?
View all responses

Super simple question for me today! I can get behind that when I’m getting sucked into playing the hottest new early access game.

My dream job has changed a couple of times between childhood and adulthood. Today, it is becoming a professional author and being able to support myself on that kind of income.

I’m working on bettering my daily habits to write consistently, like answering these daily prompts. I’m over 100 days in a row of writing every day, and I’m getting used to the idea that it is okay to put less important things aside to focus on writing if I hope to improve my habits and reach that goal. Hopefully, someday, I can publish something and be successful enough to quit my job and keep writing. Then my days would be wildly different! I’d have MORE time to do the things I want to do in tandem with writing, because I would end up substituting time spent working in an office with time spent writing.

I know I can do it if I stick with it, and I know I can keep up with writing demands if I look at the results of my NaNoWriMo 2023 daily word tracking. It is completely possible for me to write 300k+ words per year. I just have to dig in and go for it.

Bloganuary 6th: Billboards?

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
View all responses

With all of the prompts I’ve been answering the last few months, I can definitely say I had not been expecting this one. Not that it’s a wildly different or shocking prompt, comparatively, but just not something I was completely expecting at this point with the general trend of all the previous prompts.

Driving around my city, going to work, maybe going shopping or just getting something to eat, I’ve seen a wide variety of billboards. Some of them are the old style where it is one massive picture and it could be up there for months or even years, but I’ve seen more and more of the digital ones being put up or replacing the old ones. This is a big deal to me when thinking about today’s prompt because duration could play a part in what I would like to have plastered on a massive wall of pure advertisement for the world to see. Since the question is about a freeway billboard, I imagine the duration would be limited to months unless I had a special contract, so I’ll operate under that pretense. Just a couple months of ad space hanging where tens of thousands of people can see it regularly. But what to put on it?

So many choices! I could make it serious, or funny. I could try to just spread a good message to brighten someone’s day, or call out something important that I think the world should be know. Or I could just make it a shameless plug for my content, although that carries some risks. I could plug my Twitch channel (that I rarely use anymore but might return to someday), but then I have to be cautious of people recognizing my face in public or at work. HR might have a field day. The same could be said for if I were to get a novel published and I wanted to use billboard space as part of an ad campaign. I’d have to be ready for the potential consequences. Maybe I should just opt for something funny or inspiring. Oh! I had an idea. Something to really mess with people.

What if my billboard was one of those “Find X differences” images that I used to see on social media, but instead of putting up two nearly identical images with minor changes they’re just both the same image? I wonder how many people would get pissed off.