Talking AND listening
Sterling, two posts in a day... again?!
By the Gods, by the Old Blood and by the Bloodborne port/remake we are not getting, I made a blog and I will use it as I see fit.
...Moving on.
I mentioned in a previous entry that I would be talking about my flagship OC soon, and I meant it. But before I get there I want to talk about something that feels relevant as a preamble. Specifically: the importance of actually talking to people. And, perhaps more importantly, of actually listening to them.
I have a... complicated relationship with sharing my own work and stories. The short version is that I tend not to do it at all, or I do it in small, cautious doses, because there is always a part of me convinced that I am oversharing, or that I am boring whoever is on the receiving end. That their eyes are glazing over, their life slowly draining out of their body, and they are too polite to say so. I will start talking about something I genuinely love and then catch myself mid-sentence and wrap it up faster than I intended, because I decided on their behalf that they had heard enough.
Which is, frankly, a terrible habit, yes, I know. And I am working on it!
(If anyone actually wants to be infodumped about my projects, characters, stories, or any combination of the above: all you have to do is ask. Be aware that I cannot be held responsible for what happens next. You have been warned.)
There is one person I want to thank here, and they know exactly who they are. They have sat with me through more half-started explanations and nervous tangents about my stories than anyone reasonably should, and they have done it without once making me feel like a burden for it. That matters more than I usually say out loud, so I am saying it here instead. Thank you! Really.
Now, the less... heartwarming part of this post.
Some of the reason I dread talking about my own work is not just internal. Some of it was taught to me, and it was taught to me badly, by people I used to consider friends.
I have had the experience, more than once, of starting to talk about something I cared about, only to be cut off mid-sentence so that the other person could talk about their own thing. Not contribute to the conversation. Not respond to what I said. Just pivot, completely, as if I had not been speaking at all, as if I were a brief intermission before the main event. And these were not conversations, I want to be precise about that. They were more like, monologues with an audience requirement. The other person was not talking with me, they were talking at me, and my only expected function was to be present and occasionally nod.
It wore me down in ways I did not fully notice until I had already started flinching at the idea of bringing up my own projects. Because somewhere along the way my brain connected "talking about the things I love" with "taking up space someone will resent you for taking." And that is not a connection I made on my own.
The other thing it did, the thing I am perhaps most conscious of, is make me terrified of becoming that. Of being the person who turns every conversation into a performance and every listener into an audience. I would rather say nothing than risk making someone feel the way those people made me feel. Which is a reasonable instinct taken about four steps too far, and I am aware of that.
I think the actual answer, the boring and correct one, is that talking and listening are both skills and both matter, and that the difference between sharing enthusiastically and being insufferable is whether you are genuinely interested in the other person or just waiting for your turn to speak. I am interested in people (shocking, I know). Deeply, sometimes inconveniently so. And I am learning, slowly, to trust that that comes through.
The OC talk will happen, I just needed to say this first. :)