Let's Write Some More

I'm not much of a talker.  I'm one of those monosyllabic types.  Doesn't mean I have nothing to say, just that I  can't decide what to say first.  By the time I get around to saying anything, the conversation has moved on.  So I just don't say anything.   I guess that's why I'm better at getting my point across as a writer.  When you write, you don't have to worry about timing.  You can invent the whole conversation yourself.  You get as much time as you need to think about what you're going to say.  It's a luxury you don't have in plain conversation.  I think having the option to stop and think about what you're saying has ruined my conversation skills.  I can't really say anything without thinking about it first.  So am I more comfortable with writing because I'm bad at conversation, or am I bad at conversation because I spend too much time communicating in writing?  Chicken, egg.

What to write about first

So now that I've got that out of the way I'm running into the same problem: what to write about first.  I've got a lot on my mind that I think I need to build up to, a lot of stuff I think I should dedicate a blog post to.  I'm starting to find out I have more friends than I thought I did.  I got into this habit, years ago, of burning my bridges behind me and I think it's hurt me a lot.  I have this survivor complex, and a loner complex, and even though I've had a decent number of friends over the years I've always thought of myself as being alone. I few months ago, I read this article on Science Daily which suggests that the personalities we have as children carry over into our adult life.  It confirmed a longstanding suspicion I've had myself.  For years I've been analyzing people I meet in terms of what they were like as children.  I'm pretty accurate, but I'm also pretty biased.  My mother ran a home daycare for several years so I spent my preteen years around children, mostly boys younger than five.  So when I meet new people I automatically think of them in terms of what they were like as children.  I can't help it. 

Dwelling on the Past

It's come to my attention recently that I may be an information hoarder.  I can't stand to miss anything, any scrap of news, particularly science and technology news.  Maybe the Internet has encouraged this habit, I don't know, but I'm sitting on a huge pile of text files containing scraps of ideas I had years ago; ideas for stories or essays I wanted to write mostly.  I never look at them, but I always intend to go back and expand on them someday.  Maybe all writers are like this.  Anyway, another part of this hoarding behavior is that I'm a huge perfectionist.  I can't help but focus on the flaws.  I'm constantly dwelling on the past, blaming myself for things that went wrong, wishing I could go back and change things.  Everything we do adds up to compose the person we are so if you don't mind I'd like to go through some self analysis based on my history.

Stranger

As I was explaining, we are all basically the same people we were as children.  So everything about me comes down to something I did as a child.  In general, I'm not a person who deals with change very well.  I need stability because as a child I needed stability.  Unfortunately, as a child I moved around a lot.  Stability was hard to come by.  At first it was a new city, then a new school.  Every three or four years I would be picked up and have to leave everything behind.  It became something I expected to happen, even wanted to happen.  Any relationships I had I expected to be short term.  I became used to being the new kid, the only stranger in the room.  Any friendships I made I expected not to last.  I never learned the value of making friends in school.  I concentrated on my studies, saw friends as a distraction.  The pattern I saw was this: making friends means spending more time talking and getting to know them, less time to spend reading.  Spend less time reading and your grades start to slip.  Grades start to slip, it's time to move on: new school, out with the old distractions, go back to being a stranger.

Performer

Most people don't know this about me: I'm an actor.  This means three things:

1. I need a script.
I'm not comfortable being in a situation where I don't know exactly what to do. You see actors on tv all the time, and they always do exactly the right thing. You never think about it, you just expect it. No one ever makes a mistake on tv (unless it's part of the plot). No one ever stutters and stammers trying to put an idea into words. Actors get a script, lines to memorize, hours and hours to rehearse. Without those, I don't know what to do.
2. I'm used to being someone else, never myself.
For years I didn't know who I was. I divided my life into the different roles I'd play in different social situations: the school Me, the church Me, the family Me. None of those were the Me I wanted to be, nor were any of them the real Me.
3. I'm always on stage.
Everywhere I go, I feel eyeballs on me, watching me, judging my actions.  Can I fool them this time?  Can I make them think I belong? 

I acted on stage from the age of 5 up through 8th grade.  Before 6th grade, acting was fun.  I was good at memorizing lines, I enjoyed being on stage.  I thought I was so talented, that in due time I would start being picked for leading roles.  I had hope.  In Middle School I started to learn that I would never be a movie star: I just didn't have the looks, the skill.  I started realizing I had an audience and that I was fat.  I wasn't the cute kid anymore.  I started forgetting my lines in front of everyone.  They would only give me small parts, easy parts.  In retrospect, I should have tried to get more into the technical side of things: lights and sound, set design, maybe even directing.  But I only knew one solution for failure: quit.  Too many people had seen me fail, and I couldn't live with the reputation.  After doing nothing else for 8 years, I left it all behind and never went back.

Programmer

At first, I wanted to be a magician, not because of the performing aspect, but because I liked to know how things worked.  I wanted to learn the secrets, what makes the magic happen.  I still do.  I love machines, computers, technology.  Unfortunately, while growing up those were the things I had least access to.  From the age of 8 I wanted a computer not because I wanted to play games or for school but because I wanted to learn how the computer worked.  I'm still trying to do so.  I think this goes back to being an information hoarder.  I can write a program, design a user interface, write a web page, but I still don't know enough about what the computer is doing behind the scenes.  I know enough electronics to understand logic gates.  I'm comfortable with assembly language.  But I've never written a device driver.  I don't know how the different parts of the computer work together.  I only understand things on a very high, or a very low level.  Where do I go to learn the middle part?

Artist

Over the years I've had to learn something: talent is useless. I remember sitting with my brother and his friends trying to put a company together and listing our assets, hearing Scott B saying "there's so much talent in this room."  Talent is cheap.  Everyone has talent.  My teachers used to talk about how much talent I had, but nothing ever came of it.  It's skill that's actually worth something, and skill is hard to acquire.  It takes time, dedication, lots and lots of practice.  Musicians and artists and inventors don't make gobs of money because they're talented.  They make it because they're skilled.  Am I skilled?  Not really.  I'm talented.  But I've never dedicated myself to any one thing long enough to call myself skilled.  I'm a talented programmer, but not a skilled one.  I'm a talented writer, but not a skilled one.  One of the reasons for this blog is to change that, turn some talent into skill.  Maybe then it'll be worth something.