I am bad at silence

I have been known to say to various people at various times that I am "bad at silence". This happens most often when there is just me and one other person, and we are in extended close contact --spending a few hours together doing whatever. What I mean by this is that I don't like long periods where neither of us are talking. This happens frequently when out walking through the world with people, at restaurants, on transit...basically any situation where it would be considered rude to pull out a book and read for a while.

The biggest thing for me is that, if there is no conversation to focus on, I will instead focus on my own thoughts. My thoughts move very quickly, and unless you distract me, I spend a lot of time focusing on subtleties. I overanalyze things. It is a flaw of mine that I read too much into every little gesture, word, movement, touch between us (and a huge part of why I am intentionally so focused on being explicit in my relationships. I overcommunicate because I don't trust the analysis my mind creates, and I want to know what you actually mean.)

And of course, one of the things I will immediately start overanalyzing --unless I have something else to distract me¹-- is the silence. "Why are you being silent, what was last said, do I need to respond to it, or elaborate on it, fuck what is going on, we're holding hands but is that good? Should I let go? Oh hey I want to go walk on that wall instead of the sidewalk, but maybe that'd be weird, oh god do I look okay right now, is my hair behaving? Oh look a backhoe, okay I'm squeeing about the backhoe and...no response. Shit. Shit! Do they not like me because I get stupid overenthusiastic over backhoes? Oh god this isn't going to work out say something say something say something!"

1: This is why I do not typically say on IM that I am bad at silence. There is a whole wealth of internet I can be doing in between receiving your messages, and it makes it very easy not to dwell.

My response, often, is to babble. But that's just not optimal. Not just because I am at my least impressive when forced to communicate solely through the spoken word (my babbling online is, at the very least, better structured) but also because it tells me nothing, or very little, about you. I *like* learning about you. I like knowing what people are passionate about, what they're into, what they've done, what they want. Those are all really nifty things to me, and if I'm babbling about my hair, I can't be learning them.

Now, there are some people with whom I can have a perfectly comfortable silence, even without other things to distract me. Usually people I've known a long time, and spent much time around. And I do better with silence some days than others, and to be perfectly honest, sometimes I just want the world to shut up for a while so I can think (although that's usually not during times when I've planned to spend time with someone.)

So, when I say that I am bad at silence (which almost always happens after a few minutes of nobody talking) you should take it as an invitation. Tell me something --anything-- about yourself. Tell me what's on your mind. If the conversation we were having wasn't working, well, switch wildly off topic. Just...talk to me.

Save me from the silence. Save me from my own head.

~Sor
MOOP!

How I Communicate, part one: Broad Forms

I have been trying, for a few weeks now, to write a post about the different ways I communicate. This has absorbed into itself the thing I've wanted to write for a few months now, about the different social networks I use, and how I use them. The eventual post is looking to be unwieldy in a bad way, so I'm going to split it up into a few parts. This post discusses the broadest kinds of communication, and how I utilize or feel about them.

Textual:

Textual communication includes IM, e-mail, letters, and hand-written stuff that I allow other people to read¹. It is an integral part of all my social media sites (LJ/DW, Fetlife, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, G+), though not the entirety.

Textual communication is my single favourite kind of communication. It is the clearest to me. It is very fast. It can be explicit, while still retaining clever subtleties (and indeed, word choice, captilization, punctuation...all of these can add a layer of subtlety not necessarily available in other forms). It has the huge advantage of being fully archivable, and accessible at later dates. It gives me a chance to think about my words before I express them, to revise. Things written down or read make sense to me in a way that things spoken to/by me don't.

Visual:

Visual communication includes drawings, paintings, sketches, art, animations, photographs, clothing, etc. I am using it only to refer to things created by me, not actions I take (see: Movement). It is often a part of all my social media sites, though not the entirety.

I enjoy visual communications, but tend to consume them very quickly. While there have been some images that I have dwelled on, taking in every detail, most of the time I glance at it and move on. I do not spend a lot of time teasing out the hidden meaning of the things I am looking at. On the creation side, I do not tend to do a lot of communication with the world through visual art. I draw a lot of things, but it is not to express myself, it is because I want to draw fanart or whatever. Same photographs --they are to document cool things, not usually to try and get a point across. (a rare photographic exception.)

Movement:

Movement communication includes gestures, fidgeting, dancing, body language, facial expressions. It often works tandem with touch communication, or audial communication.

I use gestures often to cover gaps in my spoken vocabulary. I flail my hands around, rotate the wrist to indicate you should continue, point at people when they are correct. I am not particularly good at forcing my posture into a mood I'm not in --if I'm hunching my shoulders, pulling myself back into a ball, it means I am withdrawing (or sometimes that I am very cold). I make faces at people, but I'm not great at having unspoken conversations like some people I know are. I am fairly observant of other people's countenance, and once I know someone reasonably well, I can pick up on when they are not okay. I will usually ask if I think it is important I understand something, because I always prefer explicit communication to implied.

Touch:

Touch communication includes my touching you, or my not touching you. (or your touching/not touching me.)

I like touching a lot. I like being touched, but only sometimes and only sometimes by certain people, and it's hard for me to give examples in here without drawing attention to the blanks. I do a lot of communicating by touching people in certain ways, but it's subtle, and I make a point of assuming people won't generally pick up on subtle. I do not receive touch based communications very well, because I over or under think them. In general, asking strangers before you touch them for the first time is a good thing to do. If we have never touched, and I have never given you explicit permission to touch me, you should ask me first. This has quickly digressed away from communication and into consent culture, but that drives home the real point --it is hard for me to communicate when I am caught up in freaking out about what is going on. Please do not expect touch-based communication from me.

Auditory:

Auditory communication includes anything that involves speaking aloud, phones, Skype (along with movement), music.

Auditory communication is my least favourite way to communicate. I do not hear particularly well, I do not process words as quickly if they are spoken to me. Things are not real (to me) until they have been written down. I don't feel as eloquent or organized when I have to speak aloud. I babble too much --worse even than in text, where I can pull out large chunks of text and save them for later. There is no ability to revise in spoken conversation.

I do not, I should note, hate talking aloud. I rather enjoy conversation and have problems with silence (which is a post I should write sometime). It works fine for most things. But if you want me to remember something, you should write it down for me (or better yet, get me to write it down.)

***

I think that's all the main categories. Expect further writing on this topic, especially w/r/t social media to come soon.

~Sor
MOOP!