Wise Man Say…

A friend of mine recently commented “Sometimes you just have to question whether what you’re about to say is needed” (sic). This wasn’t, at the time, directed at me (as far as I know) since the conversation was about people who have the ability to repeatedly kill a conversation in one way or another. However, it’s good advice and advice that I’m going to put into practise.

I’m an unashamed commentor on people. They fascinate me, they really do. All their little habits be they speech, physical, consumer, eating, exercising, opinions, whatever, I just soak them up. They amuse/enthral/horrify/scare/confuse/interest me. My own habits do the same thing when I get a moment of clarity and can observe them from afar.

However, it often happens that people think I’m being bitchy but that really isn’t the case. This tends to happen either if something amuses or confuses me. With the amusement it seems as though I’m laughing at someone. In a way, that’s true I guess. However, it’s never malicious. I laugh at my own habits as well. If they confuse me then I tend to struggle to describe what’s going on, get frustrated, less focused and it becomes a meandering rant about nothing in particular. Either way, it can come off as snobbish.

So to do something about that I’ll run it past the “is it worth it meter”. Observations, no matter how small I think they are, will be screened.

This goes alongside an article that Hard (of Sexy Losers fame) wrote several years ago (and I can’t find now). It was a piece about how to write to people you don’t know on the internet, specifically creators. The main part of the article I took on board for daily life was this; don’t give unsolicited advice. No-one wants it. It’s something I’ve come to notice more and more over the years and I’ve also seen it mentioned elsewhere.

These days I find it increasingly annoying when telling a story and the listener feels the need to tell you how the problem could have been avoided. When telling stories we all leave out information, we also tell the funny ones wherein mistakes are normally made. What we don’t want is for someone to respond with “what you should do is X”. I’m not stupid, I can work these things out and if I think you have greater knowledge in an area than I do then I’ll ask for help.

It’s especially annoying when I find myself doing it despite my best efforts. I understand where it comes from; I want to help. I want to improve someone’s life and ensure they don’t encounter a problem that I can help with. At the same time, they haven’t asked for assistance and that should be the overriding factor.

Hard’s point was that he would get emails from people telling him how to promote his comic, how to get it published, what print on demand services were available as if he wasn’t aware of all these things, as if he was pining away trying to promote SL but unable to come up with simple ideas.

The above is not advice. You can make your own mind up, just don’t try to tell me how to improve my egg sucking technique unless you’re good at it.