Daily writing prompt

Where did your name come from?

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Yeah… On July 28th the daily writing prompt asked where your nickname comes from. I don’t have a nickname so my response included explaining where my name comes from.

So yeah… I have literally done this one already. Oh well.

My parents were expecting their second child. The first was a girl named Lisa. For their second child, I don’t know what the chosen female name would have been. The male name was my father’s name. Robert James. That second child was a boy… me. 52 years later, my father and I are still both named Robert James. He goes by Bob. I go by Rob.

And that, friends, neighbors, and loyal readers, is that story.

Again.

Daily writing prompt

What motivates you?

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I have no idea how to answer this question. Also, I am running late this morning so I don’t have any time to spend thinking about it. You’re just getting a gut reaction post today. Sorry.

My main motivation for pretty much everything is my family. I do what I can with the primary purpose of helping Jen and the Kids. Helping however they need help. Making them happy, making them secure, making their lives slightly easier by doing things so they don’t have to do them themselves. That sort of thing.

Outside of family, the motivation at work is the pay check that comes at the end of the month. That’s pretty standard and straightforward, right? I also am motivated to make things easier for my staff, and to make them look good to upper management. That sort of thing. Whatever I can do to help.

There’s also the creative motivation that pushes me to keep making bad music and bad photos. I am not sure what the purpose behind all of that is beyond my own mental health. Some sort of creative outlet makes me feel better about the world around me. It’s hard to stress about nazis in your neighborhood when you’re playing guitar at a gratuitous volume, you know?

Those are the main ideas, I think. Now I have to publish this so I can finish getting ready for work and get out the door to the office in time to sit in an hour and a half worth of gridlock. Yippee.

Daily writing prompt

What are your top ten favorite movies?

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My top 10 favorite movies? Nope, this question is impossible to answer. There’s no way I could narrow it down to 10 and there’s no way I could rank them appropriately. This is one of those lists that changes daily with the weather, or my mood, or my health, or whatever.

I’ll try though. They will be in no particular order (besides number one), and the list will be more like film franchises than individual movies. Okay… here goes.

1. Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch but all of the Star Wars movies are grouped in here. The original trilogy is the best, but I am including the prequels and sequels and stories too. I love them all. They are my favorite movies ever. A bad Star Wars movie is better than any other movie ever made, though to me there are no bad Star Wars movies. I adore them all.
2. The Godfather. Godfather 2 is probably the best of the three. Godfather 3 is by far the worst of the three, but I include them all because they are all brilliant.
3. The Highlander. This one does not include the sequels. It’s just the original. All of the others are garbage. The original is pretty terrible too, but in a really good way, you know?
4. Good Marvel movies. Not all of them, just the best of them. Infinity War/Endgame, Winter Soldier, Ragnarok, the first Avengers movie, Civil War. There are probably a few others that deserve to be listed, but those are the big ones.
5. The Dark Knight.
6. The Cornetto Trilogy. Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and World’s End. Sean is the best by light years, but they are all pretty much perfect.
7. Star Trek: The Even Numbered movies. Wrath of Kahn, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact. The greats. We can also include the Kelvin timeline movies here. I seriously dig those as well.
8. Goodfellas
9. The Naked Gun. Let’s include the bigger of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movies. Naked Gun and it’s sequels, Airplane, Top Secret. Also, BASEketball which is a terrible, terrible movie but I love every stupid, idiotic second of it.
10. Harry Potter. I love them all, despite Rowling turning into an fucknuckle. My favorites are Azkaban, Goblet, and the two Deathly Hallows. Phoenix is especially important to me because my wife and I saw it multiple times together when we were first dating. It will always hold a special place in my heart for that.

Like I said at the start, if you were to ask me this question tomorrow the list would be very different. This works for today though.

Daily writing prompt

What do you enjoy most about writing?

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There seem to be two themes to these daily writing prompts. One is vague questions that don’t make sense and read as though they were written by ChatGPT. The other is simple questions that I probably should have thought about over the years but never really have… that read as though they were written by ChatGPT.

What do I enjoy most about writing? I have no idea. I just do. Maybe it’s that it allows me to pretend I am a functioning human being who is capable of communicating with other human beings despite 52 years worth of introversion and being mostly unable to speak directly to those other humans.

Put more simply, it’s a work around for near crippling shyness. I can communicate with people I know well and care about. I can communicate with other people when I need to for work or to get through daily activities. When it comes to just being social or nice or whatever? Nope. I don’t wanna. I just clam up and shut down and that’s all she wrote.

Here? I can act like someone who has social skills and can function and that’s kinda fun. If other folks read it and respond to it? That’s a happy bonus. If not? That’s okay too. I still know it works. It still gets the job done mentally and emotionally and all that fun stuff.

So, yeah… communication is cool, right?