What was your favorite plaything as a child? Do you see any connection between your life now, and your favorite childhood toy?

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/daily-prompt-memento/

My favorite toy when I was a child was my Game Boy Color, the first handheld portable gaming system I had. More specifically, my favorite game was Pokémon – I owned the Yellow and Gold versions.

During my generation’s childhood, not only were Pokémon games considered companions that kids could take with them where ever they wanted to never get bored, but they were also a way to demonstrate social status. Having the strongest and widest variety of Pokémon was how you earned the respect of your peers, and you settled disputes by linking up your Game Boys and having Pokémon battles.

Since then, I haven’t actually purchased more Pokémon games. However, I did do competitive Pokémon battling for a while during the fourth generation of games, and have played some of the newer games using emulators on my computer.

I feel like having Pokémon as my favorite game as a child has affected my current life because it has shaped what I enjoy doing for entertainment. I am still more of an indoors person, and would prefer to play computer games or read books rather than do stuff outside.

It has also affected the type of games I enjoy playing. I prefer not to play games that are instance-based (where you start fresh each round), or one-time play through games where you can “beat” the game. Instead, I like to play games where you can continue to build upon your past work, and can continue to work towards a seemingly impossible goal, finding pleasure and satisfaction simply from making progress.

This is apparent from the other games I play. During middle school, I played Neopets, which is a very open-ended game that can’t exactly be “beaten.” Starting from seventh grade, I played RuneScape, also a very open-ended game where your progress is permanently saved and there’s always something dynamic to do.

Outside the realm of games, my approach to real life has become similar. I don’t like to do things that are momentary, and provide enjoyment or pleasure just for the duration of the act. Instead, I like to do things that will ultimately improve me in the long run, and help enhance my life in a larger scale.

For example, rather than traveling, I would prefer to spend that money on something like a high-end computer, that will last for years, rather than just the duration of the vacation.

This is also why I never discard anything I do. I keep archives of all the work and content I produce, and save it. If it’s contained on paper, I always scan everything and save it as electronic files before discarding any paper. This way, I am able to look back at everything I’ve accomplished in the past, and have remains of what I invested my time into doing.

What’s one luxury you can’t live without?

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/daily-prompt-luxury/

A handful of days ago, I mentioned in a previous blog post that my laptop was broken. You might already think you know where this is going, but no, the lack of a laptop did not make me realize that it is a luxury I can’t live without. Instead, it helped me realized what exactly about my laptop it is that keeps me so attached to it.

A lot of people have social networking addictions, shopping addictions, or gaming addictions, but I don’t fall under any of those categories.

I rarely use Facebook, and only sign on when I get an email notification letting me know that someone sent me a message or tagged me in something. I like browsing Twitter, but I usually look only two or three times a day, and sometimes forget to tweet for several days at a time.

I like browsing for new products, but I tend to only do that when there is a new item out and I want to compare. As for the actual purchasing process, I’m really good with only buying things I feel like I really need, so I don’t go on shopping sprees where I impulsively spend hundreds of dollars over a span of a few hours.

Although I like playing games, I never really actually got that addicted to it, and feel as if I’m sort of resistant to it. On days when I have time and feel like I have nothing to do, I’m able to play games for several hours at a time, and even all day if I literally have nowhere to go. On the other hand, when I’m extremely busy or have important deadlines coming up for large projects, I can stop playing games all together for over a week at a time without hesitation.

So what exactly did I find out about my computer usage when my laptop was taken away from me due to it being broken?

How much I rely on the Internet for communication with friends.

I’m not really much of a person who enjoys meeting up with people in real life. I tend to like seeing my friends in person when the situation naturally occurs, but otherwise, I like to keep in touch online because it lets me expand my ability to converse with many more people at the same time.

Of course, I can talk through texting and can instant message on my mobile device, but I realized how much I miss my laptop when I realized I can’t keep up with talking with 10-20 people at the same time because I can’t type quickly enough on a touchscreen.

If I get frustrated with my slow typing and choose to just stop communicating, I start feeling separated from the rest of the world because my lines of communication have essentially been temporarily severed.

So, going back to the original question, what’s one luxury I can’t live without? I’m going to have to say the convenience of online communication through a laptop.

As a result of my broken laptop, I’m not able to release any fancy content, or even really add much multimedia at all to my posts. Yes, the old desktop computer I’m using while my laptop is being repaired is literally so old that it will take me about four minutes to finish opening, editing, and exporting a single photograph to upload to my website.

I decided that this would be a good idea to focus more on text-based blog posts, seeing as I don’t really have much of a choice. To get some ideas, I went back on WordPress’ Daily Post blog.

Is it easy for you to ask for help when you need it, or do you prefer to rely only on yourself? Why?

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/daily-prompt-self/

The way this prompt is written makes it seem as if you can only be one or the other – communicative or independent. I’m actually both – it’s very easy for me to ask for help when I need it, but I will generally always prefer to rely on myself.

Most people don’t like to ask for help from others because they feel awkward. Fortunately, I have some strange inability to feel awkwardness, and tend to take more of a logical, reasonable, and analytic approach to situations (rather than avoiding situations just because I feel “weird” about it). As a result, if I think the social setting is supportive of communication, I have no problem going up to someone and asking for help.

However, I tend to only do this in one of two situations – either as a last resort, or if the thing I need help with is something I don’t have to learn. For example, if I tried something for hours that should only take a few minutes, I will probably ask someone for help. On a related note, in the second scenario, if I need to spend hours doing something that I will only ever do once in my entire life (during that instance), I’ll probably ask someone with more experience for help, and/or ask them to do it for me.

The reason I like to do things independently is because figuring things out yourself through research, trial, and error helps you learn things more completely and lastingly due to the integrated experience you have while learning. Basically, figuring something out on your own and doing it yourself will set you up for an increased chance of future success upon repeating the task, rather than getting shortcut in­struc­tions from someone and cheating your way through to the end.

Some people might argue that if it’s something you really need to learn, you can finish the task now as quickly as possible and learn it later. However, I’m very supportive of taking opportunities as they come. To me, people are better off taking the opportunity of learning how to do something by actually doing it, rather than putting it off. If I was in that situation and I put off learning something, I probably won’t end up even learning it later anyway, because in the future, I’ll be too busy pursuing other opportunities that come up at that time.

Overall, my suggestion is to find a good balance of both asking for help and being independent. Someone is not always going to be there for you to help you through tough times, and practicing your problem-solving skills is definitely going to benefit you in the long run.