Daily writing prompt

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

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This again? Another question I just don’t want to answer. Too much self reflection is bad for my mental health.

I could pay more attention to my father. I’ve talked to him much more than I usually do over the past week. I think he’s worried about me having Covid. I didn’t talk to him last night. I will try to call him tonight after dinner. I also need to pay more attention to my niece and nephews. Yesterday was my niece’s birthday and I almost missed it. I am terrible.

I can’t say I need to pay more attention to diet and exercise because I already pay WAY too much attention to those things, thanks to the gastric bypass surgery.

I need to pay more attention to being supportive of my wife. We’ve talked about this quite a bit lately. She tells me about something she’s dealing with, or something that’s bothering her, and I leap right into “I can fix this!” mode when all she wants is for me to just listen and lend a sympathetic ear. I end up making her feel worse. I kinda suck like that. I need to do better and think before I start talking. I should be able to do that, but for some reason I just fail left and right.

Okay then, if I keep pulling on these introspective threads I am going to make myself miserable. This is enough for now. It’s 7:04am, I am eating a protein bar for breakfast and now I am going to click that little blue “publish” button.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

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You want my number one priority for tomorrow? It’s only 6:18am right now, you don’t want my priority for today? Okay… I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Maybe I’ll give both.

My number one priority for tomorrow, Tuesday October 3, 2023, partially depends on what happens today. First and foremost must be to no longer have Covid-19. I am planning on testing today, but as soon as I made that decision I sneezed so… yeah. Other top priorities for tomorrow include doing whatever needs to be done to help any of my customers that might need help, closing my activity watch rings and hitting my food and water goals for the day. Fun stuff like that.

My number one priority for the coming day is to take that Covid-19 home test that I mentioned and have it be negative. I am positive I will achieve the first piece of that goal, but also pretty sure I will not achieve the second piece. Other goals include restarting my exercise routine again, hopefully without completely wiping myself out with Covid-19 fatigue symptoms. As soon as I publish this post I am going to have a faux run (running in place, or jogging in place which I pronounce yogging, with a soft J). I haven’t done this routine in two weeks, thanks Covid, so I am a little nervous, but here goes. Also, goals for today include all of the helping customers stuff I mentioned as goals for tomorrow. That’s pretty important.

Okay, so the prompt asked for tomorrow’s priority and I gave today and tomorrow. Two priorities for the price of one! You’re welcome, internets!

Daily writing prompt

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

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Hard work is fulfilling. Does there need to be more explanation than that?

For me, the biggest rush in my job comes from problem solving. A customer has an issue with their system. It’s something that we haven’t seen before. We dig into the data. We dig into the code. We step through the customer’s workflow. We follow the progression of the system. We find an inconsistency or a bug or something that needs to be enhanced. We tell the customer what’s going on and what they can do to get around it. We let Development know about it and make a suggestion on how to change the code.

A situation like that, solving a problem… it just feels good. Really good. Would I call it fulfilling? That seems a little strong, but I guess it fits. Maybe if you squint a little or look at it over time and see a trend. I don’t know. I just know I enjoy that and love how I feel when it happens.

It’s different than the feeling you get when you do some physical task around the house or something, but it’s good enough for me and my little brain and my heart and what passes for a soul.