dailyprompt-2801

Daily writing prompt

What’s the last movie that made you cry?

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I get misty watching corny TikTok clips, algorithmically designed to make me choke up. I mean, hell, I even tear up during overly sentimental commercials. I’m an easy mark.

So it might not be surprising that the last movie that made me cry didn’t make me do so in the traditional sense. Over the past year I’ve grown addicted to other people reacting to movies on YouTube. There’s a whole sub-genre of YouTubers who make money by watching videos and reacting to them on camera. Most of them claim to never hace seen the movie before and their emotional response to the scenes are often closer to that of an infant than an adult human.

I was watching a mashup of these reactions early today; a mashup of react tubers watching the ending of Band of Brothers where the identities all of the living survivors are revealed. I don’t know whether it’s the crying of the reactors or the actual content of the scene that made me cry, but I cried regardless.

I never really thought about it, but I think I’m sort of an unwilling empath. Other people’s sadness and hurt have a tendency to rub off on me.

Daily writing prompt

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

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On my 18th birthday, I received a $25,000 check in the mail. Then again, on my 19th birthday. And my 20th birthday. And my 21st birthday.

At the age of 12, I was struck by a drunk driver as I rode my bike home from my friend’s house. The pick-up truck side-swiped my wheels, and I latched onto the rear view mirror. I don’t remember much after that until I came to on the side of the road. I remember standing up in the middle of the street and spinning like a top. Surely a reaction to the shock.

According to witnesses, I had somehow flown over the bed of the truck and landed back and headfirst on the concrete. A group of construction workers had witnessed the accident and called my parents. I don’t remember how they got my phone number.

The accident happened only a two-minute drive from my home, so my parents arrived on the scene in what felt like seconds. My mother was frantic. My dad held up two fingers and asked how many he was holding up (I saw two). At the hospital, I fell into a sort of post-traumatic euphoric haze. I was alive, but I didn’t know what sort of injuries I had sustained.

After a series of tests, the doctors determined that I had fractured my L1 vertebra in my spine and had a pretty nasty concussion. As a result of my injury, I would never be able to play football for my school team, nor would I be able to do much of any strenuous physical activity for almost a year.

While I wasn’t paralyzed, and I didn’t need surgery, I was forced to wear a full-torso back brace for nine months. Eighth grade is hard enough, but being the metaphorical thumb that stuck out, I was the topic of much discussion and the subject of many stares. The majority of my classmates were very helpful and not judgmental, which made recovery easier.

As I healed, insurance claims were being litigated in the background, unknown to my 13-year-old reality. The only involvement I ever had in the undertaking was a deposition, which my teenage brain didn’t fully wrap its tendrils around.

As a result of the lawsuit, I was to receive a certain amount of money every year on my birthday, starting at the age of 18, and continuing every year for four years, with one larger payment happening when I hit 30.

So what’s the point of this whole drawn-out tale of woe? The truth is, at 18 years old, I was completely unprepared to deal with that amount of money unsupervised. Every year, I would roll through the money in months. I’d lend my friends money for rent when they were about to be evicted. I brought people out for meals and always paid. I showered myself in gifts.

I had never been properly taught how to handle money. There was no personal finance course in school. There was no education about credit, and how your credit rating would rule you for the rest of your life.

As a result, I spent with abandon. I spent as if there would be no tomorrow. I spent because at 18, $25,000 seems like the grandest of riches. I spent it because I wanted to fill the hole that PTSD from the accident had left behind.

So, my best advice I would give someone younger than myself is to never go into debt. Learn about credit. Study how to manage your finances. Invest well and at the right time. Build yourself a nest egg. Never spend what you can’t afford. You’ll thank me later.

Daily writing prompt

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

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I know the common sentiment seems to be that living forever is torturous because you are forced to watch everyone you love die. Living forever would indeed cause life to lose much of its meaning. But does the misery of a lonely forever overwhelm my fear of eternal nothingness?

I guess that depends on whether or not I deem the end of our physical bodies as nothing but a one-way journey into the void. If I am to admit even a passing belief in the paranormal, I must also admit that bodily death is not the end of our life force. Whether “death” is the end of life as we know it or the transfer of some energy or soul, that’s a thought for another time.

At the risk of getting too metaphysical, I’ll just admit that eternal life does not sound like a curse to me. I can’t imagine a universe without my presence in it. Knowing that one day, my awareness will no longer exist… it just doesn’t grok. I’ve been told by theoretical physicists to think of death this way: imagine what it was like before you were born. It’s just an indescribable nothingness. I never want to be a nothing again.

Daily writing prompt

How have your political views changed over time?

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My political views have undergone significant changes over time, particularly since I was in my early twenties in the mid-aughts. In my late teens, I was somehow introduced to the writings of Michael Savage. For the uninitiated, Michal Savage was, and still is, basically MAGA several decades before MAGA existed. Extremely isolationist, anti-immigration, and anti-progressive, known primarily for his bigoted and controversial political stances. I even wrote cringey blog posts lambasting Nancy Pelosi, as if I actually knew what I was talking about.

I watched Fox News religiously. At the time, the big primetime shows were The O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly, Hannity & Colmes, and Greta Van Susteren. During this time in my life, I was glued to the TV during these shows.

It just goes to show how easily a young and impressionable mind can be completely brainwashed if it is insulated from diverse thought. Over the following decades, I somehow came to my senses and gradually crept to the left, at one point even identifying as a full-blow progressive. I was damn near socialist.

With a much more mature mind, I can now see how hateful and dishonest the MAGA machine truly is. There is LITERALLY nary a word that comes out of DJT and his activists’ mouths that is complete and utter bullshit. Just complete fantasy.

I have found my way back closer to the center these days. I still veer to the left, but I’m very aware that many of the ideals that extreme progressives hold are just nontenable and disassociated from the reality of what can actually get done.

Daily writing prompt

Share what you know about the year you were born.

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It’s March 17, 1986. Big hair reigns supreme. President Ronald Reagan roams the Earth. Metallica’s Master of Puppets had been released only weeks earlier. Dionne and Friends top the pop charts with the Burt Bacharach joint, “That’s What Friends Are For,” a cover collaboration featuring Dionne Warwick herself, Gladys Knight, Elton John, and the boy wonder himself, Stevie Wonder.

The New York Mets had just won the World Series, their first since 1969, only notable for the fact that I am a Mets fan since birth, thanks to the curse bestowed upon me by my father and his father before him. The classic flick Back to the Future leads at the box office, while the much less classic flick Police Academy 3: Back in Training trails behind.

At around 2:30 in the afternoon, a soon-to-be-named newborn emerges from a surgically placed exit sign, feet first. The legally labeled Andrew Jason enters scene, first and soon-to-be oldest child of Mark and Frances.

In my very rose-colored glasses, the mid-to-late 1980s were the last great bastion of the America we would come to recognize as the “American Dream.” We had survived and prospered through the Industrial Revolution and the coldest times of the Cold War. The wide use of the internet was still a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye, and the iPhone, the game changer, was still two decades away from damaging the natural evolution of our children’s brains.

A suburban life was within the grasp of almost anyone who wanted one. Inner cities were on the upswing after a decline in the late-70s and early-80s. Life felt pretty secure for this very white and very privileged nugget of a human. Now, I wasn’t “trust fund” privileged, but my father had a secure job, and we had enough to get by so that my mom could stay home and be a full-time mother to me. These days, I don’t think that would be possible.

We were starting to see the wealth gap increase and, soon, explode. A tidal wave that never managed to trickle down despite the promises of our political leaders. The tech revolution, which some thought would even the playing field, seemed to widen the gap even further.

Do I long for a return to 1986? Hardly. I, like almost all of us, have become spoiled by the instant access to almost anything. The internet has been so seamlessly sewn into my life that, at this point, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to pull the threads away. But do I long for a simpler time? I do. And the older I get, the more I long; the deeper my nostalgia runs.

The truth is, we’re never going back. AI is assuring us of that. Some argue that AI will simplify our lives, and I can foresee a future where that is true, but what are we sacrificing in the process?

Daily writing prompt

Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?

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Absolutely not. A year ago today, I was two months into a new job, just at the brink of finishing my training and careening off on my own. As someone who has worked in software sales up until very recently, job security is a fleeting wish. You’re often only as good as your last month’s performance. And if you have two slow months, you can mostly kiss your ass goodbye. And it’s for this reason that SaaS salespeople don’t always have lasting longevity.

Since then, I have been through two different jobs of varying salaries. Did I expect a year ago that I would be where I am today? I didn’t expect job security, but I never could have guessed where I am today, trying to build two side-hustles into a legit, consistent business. These are both tasks of necessity, tasks that were equally part impulsive and part strategic

In most ways other than my career, things are fairly similar to how they were a year ago. As a single parent you try to build your life around routine. Routine helps prevent life from running off the rails. It doesn’t completely halt the insanity, but it adds a sense of order.

My son, who recently turned 13, is certainly much moodier than he was a year ago. The result of hormones running wild and an affinity for independence, the things we all go through as teens. So my parenting role has shifted, but has not changed. But, man, teenagers can be really trying on your patience when they want to be. It’s truly a test of your meddle.