(no subject)
People often ask me how I'm different (no kidding, they actually do, it's weird...usually it's shortly after they ask me "why not?"), and explaining it is usually a complicated issue, because in order to do it, I first have to explain to people who they are, and that almost never sits will with them. I have to show them what they take for granted, how they perceive the world, and which influences have been the root causes of just about everything they believe. I know, reading this, you're already getting nauseous about my pretentiousness, but there aren't many polite ways to phrase it, and the polite ways are terribly vague and wordy (Wordy? From Dave? Nawww).
From that point, it's a matter of showing why I'm different without making it sound like I'm better, which is the real difficulty. Any time you get into a "you vs. me" conversation, you're going to come off as being egotistical, even if you're an orange trying to tell an apple how you're different (and even if you're Michael Phelps trying to tell a kindergartner why he's sinking to the bottom of the pool).
I think I'm going to start trying to explain it a different way. I'll say that I was born without the normal set of impulses that people have, like dancing. People love to dance, all over the world. I also lack the impulse to try to make what people say mean what they very specifically avoided saying, such as suggesting that "People love to dance, all over the world" means that everybody in the world loves to dance. Things pass through my brain before they pass through my actions (usually), so I end up not doing a lot of the things that people usually do for fun. The small comforts in life mean very different things to me, and the case that exemplifies this best is in the human voice.
People absolutely love hearing themselves and each other talk, even if there's absolutely nothing to talk about, whereas I consider a voice to be delivery method rather than a valuable thing unto itself. It's like a color, in that there's no point in having it unless it's on something, preferably on a nugget of information. This is part of why I hate phones. Talking is slowed down by a variety of things, mostly by stammering, thinking, repeating the same thing over and over, and, mostly, by how much time thinking about how I'd rather be reading about something. Just listen to any conversation around you, pay careful attention to how much time is spent on the word "ummm
From that point, it's a matter of showing why I'm different without making it sound like I'm better, which is the real difficulty. Any time you get into a "you vs. me" conversation, you're going to come off as being egotistical, even if you're an orange trying to tell an apple how you're different (and even if you're Michael Phelps trying to tell a kindergartner why he's sinking to the bottom of the pool).
I think I'm going to start trying to explain it a different way. I'll say that I was born without the normal set of impulses that people have, like dancing. People love to dance, all over the world. I also lack the impulse to try to make what people say mean what they very specifically avoided saying, such as suggesting that "People love to dance, all over the world" means that everybody in the world loves to dance. Things pass through my brain before they pass through my actions (usually), so I end up not doing a lot of the things that people usually do for fun. The small comforts in life mean very different things to me, and the case that exemplifies this best is in the human voice.
People absolutely love hearing themselves and each other talk, even if there's absolutely nothing to talk about, whereas I consider a voice to be delivery method rather than a valuable thing unto itself. It's like a color, in that there's no point in having it unless it's on something, preferably on a nugget of information. This is part of why I hate phones. Talking is slowed down by a variety of things, mostly by stammering, thinking, repeating the same thing over and over, and, mostly, by how much time thinking about how I'd rather be reading about something. Just listen to any conversation around you, pay careful attention to how much time is spent on the word "ummm