22.3

My pattern for writing on the Internet is simply, write when a good idea hits you. My parents and professors say to write even when you have nothing to say. Anyone who knows me knows that I always have something to say. But writing and saying are two different things. It's a lot easier to get in trouble with talking than with writing. At least it is for me. I have a tendency to talk & talk & talk & talk... I'm the Energizer Bunny of speech. There is no off switch to my tongue, which more often than not has gotten me into some pretty different situations. What exactly does "pretty different situation" even mean? That's my coy way of saying "gotten me into trouble," "gotten me into some uncomfortable situations," "gotten me into awkward situations that later turned out to be hilarious," etc.

I do know when to hold my tongue. It's not easy but it has to be done. And there are of course topics that I have all kinds of things to say, don't necessarily need to hold my tongue for, but keep 100% silent on them anyway. If I'm silent on an issue it's because I have things I really want to say but I don't want to have to sit through what everyone else has to say. Does that mean I don't listen to anybody else? Not even close. I prefer to listen.

I'm a naturally quiet person. When I was younger I did not enjoy talking to people. I enjoyed being with people but I didn't want to talk to them. When you're a kid who doesn't talk to people you're diagnosed as being shy. Well let me tell you, I sure as hell am not shy. I'm really quite bold. Here's the difference between shy and quiet:

Shy = Being afraid of other people. You're afraid to talk to them, afraid to meet them, etc. This usually stems from all kinds of insecurities you've collected throughout your life. I have several shy friends. I feel bad for them, but given that they are my friends I've decided they can't be too scared of me. Yay!
Quiet = Not wanting to talk every second of the live-long day. If you have something to say you'll say it, otherwise you prefer to keep your mouth shut. That's me all over.

I'm aware that I said I talk a lot. I do. So how can I be quiet and talkative at the same time? Well it's really quite simple. I'm naturally quiet, but once I open my mouth to say one word I don't stop and say as many as I possibly can until someone stops me. Yes, I lack an off switch on my end, but you can shut me up. Every person has their own technique. You could hand me a chocolate bar, ask me a question I can't possibly answer, hurt my feelings, break my jaw... The list is endless.

Why am I talkative and why I do I prefer listening over speaking? Being talkative comes easily to me. I'm bubbly and outgoing, so talking seems like the best medium to display that personality. When I'm with people, I get excited over nothing, crack jokes about everything (literally, nothing is off-limits), correct stupidity (often my own), laugh at something I thought of and forgot to share with the rest of the group, and generally attract unwanted attention from everyone. It's fun. Remember, I'm an eccentric. We do things strangely because we're strange.

I really can entertain myself with a piece of string for hours. When out in public, I can get excited over opening the door properly (which trust me is an excitable experience. When you're dyslexic, distinguishing "push" from "pull" is no easy feat. Most of the time I guess and guess wrong. It's so exciting to guess and get it right). So I'm talkative due to an overabundance of bubbly-ness and outgoing-ness that is my personality.

But why listening? Well, for starters it pays to listen. When receiving instructions, you're going to want to listen. Especially if the instructor said "I'm only going to say this once." You can learn a lot about a person by how they speak. Not just the how, but word choice, body language, topic choice, length, etc. I listen to learn. When listening I'm also thinking:

"Do I want to hang out with this person based on how they talk about their friends?"
"Do I want to talk to this person based on what they're saying?"
"Could I respect this person enough to respond or should I gracefully pull out of this conversation?"
"Should I continue paying attention at all?"
"Would I want to be around this speech every day?"
"Would I repeat this to my family?"

I'm an active listener and a critical one (this isn't to say I'm going to correct everything that comes out of your mouth. It's to say that I'm not going to take everything that comes out of your mouth as a God-given fact). But my main reason for not being a talker is that it's too damn quick. When someone asks you a question they expect an answer right then. They really don't like it when you always answer with "I don't know." Parents especially hate it.

But my brain does not operate faster than my tongue. Quite the opposite in fact. I can out-talk my grey matter any day. That's how you end up in those "different situations." Example:

I think it was 2 years ago now, that I was sitting in the multi-cultural center of the college campus. I was at a round table with some friends playing a card game that I seemed to have gotten everyone hooked on. It was like a drug or something. Anytime I sat down I pulled it out and people came over to play, most of the time I didn't know who the people were. Now that I think about it, that card game introduced me to a lot of people.

Anyway, it was a rare day for me. Normally I'm quite good at shuffling a deck of cards. I mean come on, I'd been table-top gaming since I was 6 and in our family we spend Sunday family time playing poker (one of these days we'll play pokim. Bad joke, I get it from my Dad, blame his genetics not me). But for some reason, I just couldn't shuffle the deck. I'd go to do a falling bridge and undo all the shuffling or I couldn't do the shuffling itself. It was very frustrating and apparently frustrating for my friends as well. One of them grabbed the deck from me and said she'd do it. The way we do card games in our group of friends (and family really, it is where I learned this after all) is that we all take turns shuffling and dealing. Whoever shuffles also deals, and we take turns every round.

Every time my turn came up, my friend refused to hand me the cards and insisted on doing the shuffling for me. She'd let me deal, but I wanted to shuffle. I got frustrated with her and said they were my cards. Okay, here's what I actually had planned out in my head before saying it was, "It's not fair, they're my cards and you won't let me shuffle the deck."

Here's what I really said, "It's not fair, they're my cards and you won't let me shuffle the dick." At which  point I clapped my hand over my mouth and my eyes widened in horror as the rest of my face flushed a deep red. My friend dropped everything, executed a face palm, collapsed on the table and started laughing hysterically. Tears were welling up in my eyes as I held in my laughter and repeated, "That's not what I meant to say!" Another friend leaned in with a grin on her face and said, "Don't worry, nobody heard you."

"But you two did!"

"Yeah, but we won't tell anyone."

The worst part of it was when the head of the center walked by as I had my slip of the tongue. She's a real stickler for proper language and has a fierce temper. I was afraid she'd have heard me and would bite my head off. But my second friend was right, no one else heard me. They all just looked over strangely at the table trying to figure out why three girls were having hysterical fits of laughter for what seemed like an eternity.

Those kinds of situations don't really happen in writing. And in truth, you have all the time in the world to come up with an answer to pretty much any question. Granted instant messaging kind of kills that statement, but I'm talking more traditional writing. I would never have been able to get everything I've written in this post into a conversation flawlessly. I would have been cut off, jumbled up words (or as my parents say "I wixed my mords), forgotten bits and pieces, bored my audience, etc. With writing I can take all the time I need (which I did), save it and come back to it later (which I did), delete parts of it and try again (which I didn't), make it as long as I want (which I always do), and so forth.

As talkative as I am verbally, I'm far more talkative in writing (you're reading the proof). I drive everyone nuts with surveys because I struggle with simple answers. Every answer is a paragraph except when it's an essay (no joke, I really do this). It's easier, more comfortable, and ironically enough I'm more honest in my writing. Even when online (supposedly everyone lies on the Internet. Here's one who doesn't). You can't really revisit conversations because they're rarely told the same way twice much less 16 times. But you can revisit writing as often as you want and it's all there just like the first time. Sometimes that's a curse, but most of the time it's like visiting very old friends.

And that brings me to the point of all this. I used to write only when I good idea came upon me. Everyone else told me to write even when I had nothing to say. I have found that this blog is the first one where I can just write. It doesn't matter if it's one sentence or a freaking novel (which this is nearing given the length of my previous posts by comparison). I can write about anything. I've established that I'm an eccentric. Artiste gives me free range over any topic because as a lovely hitRECorder said, "Your words are your art."

This blog is my studio. It is my art. It is my journal. It is my portfolio. You'll see writing that was clearly a good idea striking me. You'll see writing that's clearly saying nothing. And you'll see writing that's really just me talking to myself more than anything else. I talk through what I write. This is how I communicate best, and it's how others communicate with me. I've learned more life lessons from what I've read than what I've heard from actual people, but that is a different post for a different time.

Until next time this is the Amazon Artiste signing off.