Friday, January 15, 2016

Misunderstood babble


Early this century, I was asked by my boss’s boss to write a report about something that happened at work since my boss was on vacation at the time.

After he read it, he came to me and asked who wrote it for me stating there is no way I am capable of writing it as well as I did.

From that point, I stopped respecting him and was glad when he left the company. However, his statement eventually made me realize something important. The way I speak to others causes some people to think I am stupid.

How a message is delivered can affect how it is received. Since I have a bad habit of editing sentences while delivering them, points I try to make as well as how people perceive me gets tangled in my babble.

Knowing this, I anticipate potential situations and what I will say in them. Occasionally people will see me mouth words or even speak to no one. Much of that time, this is what I am doing and yes, that changes how people perceive me.

I treat written things with the same scrutiny that people use when I talk. Unlike in speech, I can and often edit what I write and when not careful, the editing process can create sentences that don’t make sense or spelling errors which get overlooked as the sentence structure dominates my train of thought. It is rare that a post to this blog does not get edited for content or for an error after it is posted and I do appreciate it when someone mentions it to me.

I now see this in other places as well. Right now the person who leads all polls for the GOP presidential election is spewing ideas and concepts that many people find appealing even though the practical application of them would create a disaster. Having a responsible person in charge is what keeps those ideas from being enacted.

I have also seen a tv show which presents the same argument which I base my entire belief system upon and I have trouble watching it. The evidence presented is overwhelming but the point the show wants to make is ruined by the monotone voice of the narrator and by the appearance of one of the experts in the show.

 
When I talk to others about the show, they think it is a joke.


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