I met a dog on the way to work last night and I got to pet him a little bit. I was just walking by and it paid attention to me, so obviously I had to pet it. Naturally, I had to talk to its person a little bit as well, which of course was awkward, but still. Doggie.

Hakiu!

Call me a doctor.
As in, locate one for me.
I’m bleeding to death.

Here’s where I explain the haiku: He wanted someone to call a doctor for him, but instead that person just referred to him as a doctor, so he had to explain what he meant. This has been a Helpful PDR Poetry Note.

So, across the street from me there is a Vogue Optical, right? Place what sells glasses and your second pair is free and all that? You know. Anyhow, since as long as I can remember there has been an eye chart in the window. That changed a few weeks back. I was looking down one day and I watched in horror (maybe “watched with mild interest” would be more accurate) as the chart was taken down and in its place they put up some pictures of beautiful people wearing glasses.

I immediately chose to be outraged. This could not be a simple case of a store owner trying to change things up a little. What this was is an example of modern society placing less interest in actually using glasses to correct vision, but instead using them to look good. Once again society’s obsession with beauty outrages me.

And I was so outraged I forgot about it until weeks later when I needed something to put on my website. That’s how outraged I was.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m bad at conversation, but I certainly wouldn’t say I’m good at it. I’ve known people who are really good at anecdotes and I am not one of those people. They really seem to enjoy telling stories and know how to do it well. I, on the other hand, consider oration a constant struggle to hide how easily I trip over words or get lost in meandering tangents.

I could probably get better with practice, I’m sure, but then we come to my second problem: I bore myself. It’s true that even in my purposefully boring life I still do things (or have things happen to me) which could be amusing when retold, but here is a fact: The more often I talk about something, the more it bores. And this doesn’t just apply to the anecdotes either. The default thing people talk about when meeting people is jobs, right? Well, (ignoring how much I hate my job to keep the example easy) I quickly grew tired of telling people what I do for a living. But when I found out my actual title (Nighttime Post Press Production Supervisor) I enjoyed working that in when they asked (always sure to include the fact that for years I didn’t know my own title), but soon I tired of that one too. The hypothetical person I am speaking with would find this information new, but to me it has become tired. If you’re not, like, one of the first three people I’m talking to about something, the odds are that I have lost all excitement for it, and that’s bound to hurt the quality of my conversation. (From the other side, I really don’t enjoy if a person is talking to me about something they’ve told me before. I assume that since they don’t tire of their anecdotes, they probably keep them in rotation, so when they forget that I’ve heard it, out it comes again. I guess it’s fine if I’m only hearing it for the second or third time, but I’ve had people repeat the same things to me more often than that and it grows weary.)

Related to that, I can’t be bothered to fill everyone in on the details I need for my anecdotes and stuff. I already know what I do for a living, so when I want to tell someone about something that happened at work, for example the time I lost a fingernail because I got a hand caught in a machine (all anecdotes are about injuries, right?), I go off the idea as soon as I realize that I would actually explain what I do, what the machines are like, and how I used to have a fingernail. All that is taken for granted by me, and thus bores me (see above). So the result is either a weak telling of the anecdote and the details, a telling of the anecdote that suffers from lack of details, or just skipping it altogether. Thus, the more often I see and speak to a person or the more common knowledge that person has on a subject, the surer my footing on the cliffs of speech (metaphorically). And this also carries over to other things. At a couple of the jobs I’ve had I’ve been made to train other people. I hate that. I hate having to go over that stuff. Specifically because it is work, it is such a routine that it goes way beyond a story I’ve told a few times. It’s something I’ve done daily for a depressing number of days and talking or thinking about it just makes it so much worse. I will never enjoy training someone unless they already know everything I’m supposed to tell them.

I do, however, consider myself a good listener. Apart from that bit about people repeating themselves, I like hearing what people have to say (that may be why the repeating themselves bit is so annoying). This, of course, places the burden of the conversation upon my hypothetical conversing partner, which (with some exceptions for people who don’t mind carrying the conversation) again weakens the whole thing. And that’s why the best of all options for me is the be in a larger group of people having a conversation. I get to listen to the back-and-forth and chime in if, at any point, I actually have something I think could be interesting. Of course, there is the constant threat of people who will take my silence as a bad thing and try to directly bring me in. I’m sure their intentions are good (trying to make me feel like part of the group, as if that has ever been a PDR goal), but it just brings me back to the awkward attempt the get my brain to catch up with my mouth of a regular conversation, only now I’ve got a bigger audience.

So there you have it. Another look into the workings of my finicky hermit of a mind. I can and do enjoy talking with people under the right circumstances, but those are some pretty specific circumstances. Otherwise, why can’t we just enjoy the silence together, eh?

Anyway, that is just talking. With written conversations, I have more time to deal with my sentences and sort my thoughts. Sure there are the pitfalls of typos, forgetting words, overuse of parentheses, and all that, but generally I can get my points across much easier. And when I’m tired, I tend to just ramble on and on and on. Like this has been.

Why can’t I get to sleep? I’m totally tired. Come on, body! You’re supposed to know how to cover this part.

You know what sucks? If I see a person walking a dog down the street and they pass me, if I want to pet that dog, I pretty much have to talk to the person. It’s unfair.

Haiku!

Dogs are my good friends.
We like to hang out sometimes.
We should hang out more.

I haven’t really had much to say on here lately, and I’ve been too busy to just make up nonsense to say as would be the standard solution. But in any case I feel like I can at least announce that I have finished drawing the SecGov Robots “short introduction” story that I’ve been doing since February or whenever it was I started it. There’s ten pages or so that I’ve got to put up, but I’m still going to space them over a couple weeks so I can spend the time I’d spend drawing on other things.

I’ll try to have something else to say later in the week.

“They keep coming up with these stupid computer things. There should be one damn computer thing, that’s it!”
— Robert Freeman

So now I’m on Google Plus. I remember when Facebook was new, people kept using it and I didn’t bother joining up. Then I joined up and now I like it. I don’t do much with it. I can send messages to people in a more efficient form than my email and I can play Scrabble and also there’s a program where I can keep track of books as I read them that’s pretty neat. I have no problem with Facebook. But some people do. They wanted something different so now Google Plus happened. I probably wouldn’t have joined, but Kiiip sent me an invite so I figured, why not?

And now I’m on two different social media things. I was never on the Myspace or the Twitter. I feel like it’s going to get all complicated and I’ll have to start putting more mental effort into it and that’s going to cause social anxiety. Like real life! And if computer-type socializing starts becoming as bad for me as real-life socializing? What then? What’s the point? Argh.

Ah well. I’m on there now, so we’ll see what happens.

I feel I must state something for the benefit of all people who might want to come up to me and say something. I am not listening. If you come up to me and start talking I will not notice right away unless you get my attention first. This applies to people on the street, people at work, people pretty much anywhere. And yet it seems like people just love to walk up to me and start talking. They’ll stand beside me, or even behind me, and they just assume I am listening while they say things like “Sure is hot today, huh?” or “How was work last night?” or whatever, but what they don’t realize is that I do not maintain a constant state of awareness at what people are saying around me. If you’ve not got my attention, I’m going to assume you are speaking to someone else and I will remain in the state of mental detachment from reality where I spend as much time as possible. That is all. I hope this helps all you random people in the future.