Daily writing prompt

What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?

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I’m at the age where some health issue could emerge, I suppose. Maybe something will come up in the lives of one of our kids. I’m hoping that the next six months just give us more of the same, which for me includes an almost daily wrestling with a never-ending, though often nebulous To Do list.

I’m hoping that the biggest challenge I face is finding ways to be useful, along with finding a smile– which, for various reasons, has been difficult for some time now. Or maybe the inertia surrounding church attendance will give way to more concrete action one way or another.

Daily writing prompt

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

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Don’t waste a minute worried about the bullies who pushed you into lockers– they have their own issues and might have reached the height of their power and influence already, in high school.

Read between the lines of the cynicism and nostalgia and pay attention to the practical advice given by your elders. Learn about money management and property values, practice piano and guitar to the point of proficiency. Pay attention to politics, develop a knack for detecting BS.

Learn your way around a lathe, and a woodshop in general. Don’t go to college unless you have some semblance of a plan for what comes afterwards. Value every minute you get to spend with family and friends. Be endlessly curious, exercise regularly, don’t eat junk, believe in yourself, and find a good therapist.

Don’t fear failure.

And don’t get discouraged– the love of a good woman is in the cards.

Daily writing prompt

What bores you?

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Advertising on commercial television, contrived conversation uttered to fill a silence, most political debates during campaign season, just about any statement from any member of the Trump administration, which is often both boring and rage-inducing.

An insistence on self-actualization, being all you can be; winter, at this point; and sorting through boxes in the basement.

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite drink?

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Non-alcoholic, it’s water and cold brew coffee, along with an occasional espresso drink at Starbucks. Of the alcoholic variety, probably a tie between a Gin and Tonic or Jameson and Ginger and a frosty, hoppy, slightly grapefruity IPA.

Daily writing prompt

Who are your favorite people to be around?

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I could make something up about needing to surround myself with people who push and challenge me and make me the best I can possibly be, but that would be overkill and a lie. I like being around people who I feel comfortable being around– people who make me laugh, who bring out the kid in me, who listen if I need to explain something I’m feeling or something I have a question about, who I can share a meal or a beer with and shoot the breeze about deep or mundane things. Or just sit in silence.

So, my wife and other members of the family, and a couple of college friends.

Daily writing prompt

Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

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Probably a pair of Hoka Bondi 8s– lots of cushioning, very comfortable. I’m not sure where they’ve taken me, but I’ve worn them on many walks around the neighborhoods, and probably on trips to New England and Colorado. They’re now my work pair– the ones I wear when I’m working on anything inside or out, including snow shoveling.

This is what happens after I have a pair for a certain amount of time. They move along in the rotation to make room for a newer pair and eventually find their way to the trash barrel, after a ritual and Kondoesque acknowledgment of their usefulness.

Daily writing prompt

Write about your approach to budgeting.

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We’ve worked with a budget mindset, but only in the broadest sense. There has never been a formal plan, one where we sit down on a regular basis and talk things over or chart things out. Somehow, we made it through all the years of paying too high a percentage of monthly income on a mortgage, but not without occasional animated discussions and frayed nerves.

Budgeting has always been my Achilles heel, much to my wife’s chagrin. I understand the wisdom of it, I guess, along with the importance of saving for a rainy day, but I’ve never really taken it to heart. Fortunately, I had a built-in savings plan during my years in the ministry, with money being set aside for a pension, along with what had accrued in the way of a monthly Social Security benefit. If my retirement had been solely dependent on disciplined personal savings, we would be in trouble. Or I’d still be working.

As things stand now, and perhaps all along, I have lived with a sort of financial radar, some level of awareness regarding our financial limitations, or what we have to work with on a monthly basis. I pay attention to income v. expenses, but I will always be dealing with an inner voice that’s grown from a whisper to something more audible: “You only live once, and you’re not getting any younger.”

To be honest, I’ve always lived with a mix of selfishness and throwing caution to the wind, when it comes to things fiscal.

Daily writing prompt

Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?

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I used to be a “love it or leave it” guy, I guess– back in my Boy Scout days– but then things got more complicated and I started reading books, listening to different opinions, doing a bit of traveling, seeing things for myself.

I wouldn’t consider myself patriotic right now. I still root for the American athletes at the Olympics but am much less disappointed if they don’t do well. And given the current leadership and combative atmosphere in this country, patriotism is a word I associate with ignorance and hubris. It gets thrown around and misused, or used as a weapon to threaten conformity to an authoritarian, Christian Nationalist agenda I have no desire to support.

So, no, since my understanding of patriotism comes with a layer of introspection and critique that the current administration likely finds aggravating, distasteful, and somehow unpatriotic.

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

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A couple of speeding tickets locally, and a pleasant warning from an officer of the law when we were walking through the streets of Cheyenne, WY– for j-walking.

The speeding tickets really got me hot under the collar. They came in relatively rapid succession, and cost me money I could think to spend in at least a hundred better ways. And I guess it wasn’t totally unintentional, though I wasn’t trying to get a ticket. It’s just that the speed limit in the areas of infraction seemed and continue to seem almost ridiculously low.

Daily writing prompt

If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

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A Mixed Bag.

Or maybe If Only…, or Highs and Lows and In-betweens

I don’t really know.