PROMPT: Phase in Life

Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

I guess it’s a confession of antsiness to admit that I haven’t experienced such a time. I left home a week before my high school graduation ceremony. I never gave reenlistment serious consideration when I was in the military. There was a several year gap between my undergraduate studies and my first graduate degree. I’ve never left a job teary-eyed.

If it’s the case that everyone experiences such a time, then mine is yet to come.

PROMPT: For a Day

Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

A Buddha / Bodhisattva (if there’s one about these days.) Why? To feel how his (or her) subjective experience compares to my own.

PROMPT: Title

Daily writing prompt
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

The Bigger they Fall, The Harder They Are

PROMPT: Parents (at my age)

Daily writing prompt
What were your parents doing at your age?

Regretting having that last kid… (that would be me!)

PROMPT: Describe a Man

Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

A little under six feet tall, medium build, dark hair, olive complexion,…

PROMPT: Positive Events

Daily writing prompt
What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?

Just, oh so many of them. Virtually all of them. I’ve succeeded in every breath I took (so far, fingers crossed.)

PROMPT: Change

Daily writing prompt
What is one thing you would change about yourself?

For a long time, I’d have said that I’d like to be less introverted. However, adjusting my attitude towards introversion, managing it, and recognizing / valuing the strengths that derive from it has been one of the most enlightening and empowering processes of my life. (So, I’m keeping it.)

However, I do have an ulnar impaction in my wrist that I’d be happy to get rid of (if anyone with such powers is taking requests.)

PROMPT: Technology

What technology would you be better off without, why?

That’s a tough question. While not a Luddite, I do think there are a number of technologies that are out of control, figuratively (or may – literally – become so.) But that doesn’t mean I think they should be gone altogether (it just makes me wishful that people can find a way to moderate their use.)

I’ll go with nuclear weapons, the one technology whose only use lies in not being used. I choose them because they result in low-level existential dread and inflated tax bills. [There is the argument that they may have staved off a colossal Third World War, but one can also argue that two really shitty wars in rapid succession led to institutions (e.g. UN agencies & permanent alliances) and approaches (e.g. low-intensity proxy wars) to avert such a war as well (Those things also being extremely expensive, but not so much with the existential dread.)]

PROMPT: Procrastination

What have you been putting off doing? Why?

Answering this prompt, apparently. It’s been around several times now – I think.

Why? No good answer came to mind, before now.

PROMPT: Grown Up

Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

In retrospect, I’d say it was when I was on an airplane headed to Basic Military Training. I left a few days after completing high school classes, and a week or so before our graduation ceremony. That would definitely have been the point at which I had to realize whatever transpired, I was on my own. My problems were no longer distributed between myself and parents or myself and teachers, but it was all on me.

That said, I suspect that as a teenager I would have reported moments long before then, like my first solo out-of-state road-trip. I think a general feature of the adolescent condition is feeling grown up before one actually is in any real sense.