3764: Hush
Another fable:Everyone who knows me in real life knows I'm a quiet person, which runs counter to my journal entries by the very nature of the Internet. [Difficult to pass a font off as illegible and all, barring style settings.] A long-running peeve of mine is having to deal with complaints that I should "speak up" or "stop mumbling"... yet the recursiveness of the problem has yet to draw out my contrary nature to solve itself, i.e. I start yelling because I'm tired of not being heard. [Instead, I remember X, Y, or Z stupid thing I said once before, which draws out a contrary nature to NOT have the next stupid thing I might say be heard.]
A regular criticism I receive as a result of being quiet is that I should take a public speaking class. This happened all through school and even into college, when I was forced to take Public Speaking as a core credit. After putting it off for as long as possible, and suck though it did, I toughed through the embarrassment and gave my final presentation on logic [as abstract of a subject that is, a classmate did his on the pros and cons of owning a zombie vs. a vampire for a household servant] and was done with that.
Still quiet, though.
What I took away from the experience, and what became my retort from that point on, was that I did take Public Speaking and, in fact, got an A. When asked how I managed that, I explained that public speaking was pretty much entirely about organizing one's thoughts and presenting them in a coherent manner*, not about projecting one's voice. [That's more Theatre/Drama.]
*Oddly enough, since then, I have gotten comments that something I wrote is hard to follow--which goes to show that I'm only brillant in bursts or something. I guess.
The moral is even more vague than usual, since I still haven't figured out how to combat the instinct to avoid saying something stupid. Certainly it behooves us to learn what does and does not work and why, but that's so vague a moral as to encompass so many fables beyond one specific incident. I do still have problems pretty much every time someone calls my extension at work [I accidentally ruined a call by failing to find the forward extension before the phone hung up on me, e.g.], which is the main reason I would love to not have my name and number anywhere on the correspondence I have to send out to people, but there's only so much I or anyone can really do.
Also, maybe some of you didn't believe me about the comic. And still don't 'cause it's just rework. Ah, well.
Sucks that Blogger is such a nice alternative to an automated comic script generator--I had today's and tomorrow's in the queue with the rest scheduled as I can finish them. Would be nice if I had a few more ideas than a week's worth =/
A regular criticism I receive as a result of being quiet is that I should take a public speaking class. This happened all through school and even into college, when I was forced to take Public Speaking as a core credit. After putting it off for as long as possible, and suck though it did, I toughed through the embarrassment and gave my final presentation on logic [as abstract of a subject that is, a classmate did his on the pros and cons of owning a zombie vs. a vampire for a household servant] and was done with that.
Still quiet, though.
What I took away from the experience, and what became my retort from that point on, was that I did take Public Speaking and, in fact, got an A. When asked how I managed that, I explained that public speaking was pretty much entirely about organizing one's thoughts and presenting them in a coherent manner*, not about projecting one's voice. [That's more Theatre/Drama.]
*Oddly enough, since then, I have gotten comments that something I wrote is hard to follow--which goes to show that I'm only brillant in bursts or something. I guess.
The moral is even more vague than usual, since I still haven't figured out how to combat the instinct to avoid saying something stupid. Certainly it behooves us to learn what does and does not work and why, but that's so vague a moral as to encompass so many fables beyond one specific incident. I do still have problems pretty much every time someone calls my extension at work [I accidentally ruined a call by failing to find the forward extension before the phone hung up on me, e.g.], which is the main reason I would love to not have my name and number anywhere on the correspondence I have to send out to people, but there's only so much I or anyone can really do.
Also, maybe some of you didn't believe me about the comic. And still don't 'cause it's just rework. Ah, well.
Sucks that Blogger is such a nice alternative to an automated comic script generator--I had today's and tomorrow's in the queue with the rest scheduled as I can finish them. Would be nice if I had a few more ideas than a week's worth =/