Daily writing prompt

Who are the biggest influences in your life?

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It’s not easy to pinpoint my biggest influences in life, but there are several, both professional and personal.

At my last job, I worked with brilliant people, and some of them have been a source of influence. I was blessed enough to have great managers; I will refer to them by their first initials: M, J, and J.

They were professional and human, and taught me a lot about the American corporate world—not in a strictly professional sense, but also on a personal level.

My father is also an influence. He is a very peculiar man, but he is an honest man, and overall, a family man.

Recently, I got married in the Catholic Church and had my son, Michael, baptized. In order to get the baby baptized and prepare for our marriage, we did marriage and baptism prep with Deacon Jim and his wife, Stephanie. I loved interacting with them; in particular, there was something that Stephanie said that stuck with me.

They centered their lives around the faith and the Mass. So, for example, if they were on vacation, they would search for churches around them to revolve their Sundays around the Mass, and then they would enjoy the rest of their vacation day.

There are other influences, more on the celebrity side of things. Tenors, journalists, writers, but I don’t think I should make a list… a great narrator and creator that I love is Hideo Kojima; he is a source of influence on the creative side.