Unauthoritative Pronouncements

via

merlin:

It’s true.

I made a list in the shower one morning. I totally did.

Privately, I’m utterly obsessed with eventually being great on The Incomparable.

It’s ponderous.

Merlin is too hard on himself here. He’s since gone on to contribute to some really good episodes of The Incomparable. This one isn’t even a bad episode, nor my least favorite, by any stretch.

I feel for Merlin. Not that I have ever, ever, ever been a part of anything like The Incomparable, but I can identify with some of his regret here. I am actually deeply anti-social, but under the right (wrong) circumstances, I won’t shut up. There seems to be a tipping point in a conversation where it transitions from “excruciatingly difficult to talk” to words just falling out of my mouth. Sometimes I manage to catch myself on that last part, but that only results in me slamming the brakes on saying anything. Ideally I should be able to reach some kind of conversation-cruise-control where I am contributing just the right amount to a conversation.

Do you know what would be even better? To be the person that can wait on the sidelines and just pop in with that one really amazing thing. Scott McNulty often does just that on The Incomparable. He joked, in that Twitter exchange with Merlin, that he doesn’t talk. That’s not the case, he is simply very judicious with what he says. An example is The Incomparable’s I Look Forward to Ignoring Your Criticism, where Scott deftly swoops in and executes the perfect, show-title-worthy statement (you can tell it was worthy because it’s the title). His economy of speech is really something that I envy. Not because he says less but because when he does say something it is some kind of conversation concentrate. I have tried to do this, but this suppression usually results in me favoriting nearly everything.

I am really bad at this on the internet too. You may have noticed. After all, this silly blog does say “Rambling. On the Internet”, and does what it says on the tin. Even today, I kept butting in to Twitter threads and lobbing “witty” comments in to the fray, but why? Was I witty? Odds are I could have said 1/99^th of what I said.

Just look at me, now, taking something someone else said and then spewing out all these words just to circle back to it being about myself. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to “reblog” Merlin’s post. But that’s what Tumblr is for, right? Theoretically, right? How could I pin this to his post? Does that mean I should have deleted this? The most economical thing would be to skip this post. This conflict between wanting to say all of this potentially-idiotic, self-centered crap, and wanting to say only important things that contribute to a conversation makes me anxious. And yet, here it all is, in this half-measure where I can whinge about my insecurities without bothering someone. That’s partially why I oscillate between sheepishly posting things on here (and TPS), and the other extreme of shoving links at people every time I think I may have something worth sharing. Do I want to be part of a conversation, or do I want the conversation to be about me? Truthfully, mostly column A, but some column B – and that freaks me out. There’s stuff on TPS that podcasters haven’t read because I don’t want to insert myself in to their “conversation”.

Merlin at least made a list to try and be better on The Incomparable. I don’t know what to put on my list, just all the things I don’t like. I should probably pick a narrower area to improve first.

Lastly, (finally!) if I ever spew a bunch of words at you and then clam up, refer to this. I may already regret how much I will have said before you do.