PROMPT: Favorite Quote

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite quote?

I don’t think I have a favorite quote, devoid of context, but as I’ve been thinking about travel at the moment, the following comes to mind:

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

James A. Michener

PROMPT: Life-Changing Tip

Daily writing prompt
If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?

Recognize that your experience of the world is not the world, itself. You have tremendous (potentially complete) control over the former, but virtually no control over the latter. #SakshiBhava

PROMPT: Reason

Daily writing prompt
Do you think everything happens for a reason?

No. I do not think everything happens for a reason, but I do think it is beneficial to see the positive in challenging life events. Both approaches serve to keep one from feeling victimized by life, but the latter doesn’t require that one believe in some grand architect twiddling the dials on one’s life events — and isn’t a Panglossian rationalization.

PROMPT: Home Decoration Style

Daily writing prompt
What’s your home decoration style?

I was unaware such a thing existed. I would say “Post-apocalyptic Chic.”

Your Own Way

PROMPT: Actually Kept?

Daily writing prompt
What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?

I must say the “actually” in this prompt feels a bit accusatory and judgmental — as though, as a matter of practice, the answerer is generally unreliable. It also sounds like a question for someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder — otherwise who is making promises to whom? I am either one being or I contain multitudes, there being two seems at once too crowded and too lonely.

Surrender

Strange Planet

PROMPT: Feel Bad

Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

Kindle Reader. Do people engage in habitual activities that they feel bad about? I understand the occasional excessive pile of ice cream or hedonistic cheeseburger, but continually doing something one feels bad about seems self-rectifying.

PROMPT: Inspired

Daily writing prompt
What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel?

I would say it’s much more common for travel to inspire me to read a particular book than the other way about. I can’t think of a case in which reading a book was the prime mover in a decision to travel to a given place. But I do try to read some literature from every country or literarily active city that I visit.