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?

Daily writing prompt

What do you love about where you live?

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I live in a small city which is really closer to a suburb. We’re about 30 minutes north of Boston, 30-40 minutes east to the Atlantic ocean, less than half a mile from the Massachusetts/New Hampshire state line, about an hour south of the White Mountains and the New Hampshire lakes region. We have multiple major urban areas, sprawling suburbs, and rural communities complete with farmland, all within an hour or two’s drive.

Really… what’s not to love? This is the perfect place.

We have picturesque Spring times, gorgeous Summers (usually, the last few have been more or less ruined by constant rain, but when the sun comes out it’s gorgeous at least), and easily the most beautiful Autumns on the continent. Winters suck, but if you are the kind of crazy person who loves winter then I guess it’s pretty wonderful.

We have historic franchises in all four major professional sports. Personally I am a Bruins (NHL) and Red Sox (MLB) fanatic. We also have minor league sports within a reasonable distance, and there are major universities all over the place. Literally. In Boston there is a huge university in pretty much every neighborhood. It’s insane when they all have their students move in at the same time. The end of August through Labor Day weekend can be a bit of a travel nightmare in Boston. Still, that means there are major college sports teams everywhere. NCAA hockey in New England is more or less the best in the country (though the Minnesota/South Dakota region would probably argue with that statement). So if you love sports at a high level, this is the place to be.

There is as much history here as you can get in the US. I imagine folks in Europe, Asia, and Africa laugh hysterically at folks in the New World when they talk about history, but for what you can get here in the Americas, Boston and the surrounding area is the place to be. We have connections dating back to the 1600’s here, where most of the US only clearly dates back to the 1800’s (yes I know I am focusing on white folks, but that’s mostly because pre-white folks invading the land there wasn’t much in the way of permanence as far as civilizations go). My sister once taught elementary school in southern California. They teach state history there as well as US history. She told her co-workers that in Massachusetts we don’t teach state history. When they asked her why she told them that US history is Massachusetts history. There is no US without us.

There are other things to love about our neck of the woods here in greater Boston, affectionately known as The Hub of the Universe. My family is here. My step kids have moved a few hours away but they are still close enough to get to them when we need to see them. On a few occasions I’ve thought about thinking about moving away from here. Southern California would be my first choice if I left. Manhattan, apart from the effing Yankees and Rangers (and Mets and Islanders too), would be another choice. Annapolis, MD won us over on our one visit there. That would probably be my third choice. There are a bunch of places in Europe I could see myself moving to as well, and let’s not discount Australia (even though having christmas in summer time is somehow offensive). When you come down to it though… I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I love it here.

Except for the friggin’ winters.