A Short Story of How I Learned to Speak

I did another video. There are times when I really don’t want to do anything at all. It’s like wringing out a fish to get anything good from me. I hope I can do a better job of having more positive things to write about. It’s an uphill battle, as writing is one of the ways I vent. Like talking to a silent, understanding monk, I’ll spill my problems out and feel better. I’m not sure if it’s the spilling that helps or just time. Like the tacos, it could be both.

The question I’ll look back at, which I think is a good question, is whether there needed to be a moral to the problem of last week. Should I learn a lesson after suffering, or should I simply take the pain and swallow it? I’m not sure. I’m certainly none the wiser on the answer. Perhaps that is the sign.

We had a big shindig at work. Team building and motivation. All the usual. It wasn’t bad. I think when I paint a picture like that, most would take a ‘here’s a pizza party for your 100 years of service’ type of deal, but it wasn’t like that. There were door prizes. Getting paid to be at work is a plus. Quite the highlight for me. We had a number of tasks to do and we weren’t close.

I had a coworker say that I was a good speaker. It was nice. A genuine compliment. I’ve had a lot of practice talking. It’s funny that that would stick. Of all the things in my career, running my gums is the thing that makes me stand out. I’ll take it. I don’t have anything else to back it up really.

It isn’t a skill I would have given myself much credit for. I’ve always been relatively sociable. When I was a young teenager I played travel soccer and therefore had more friends than I knew what to do with. After I quit, there was a gap. A long gap where I had people around me, but I’m not sure I would say that I had any friends. Certainly none close. I didn’t have a cell phone, but even if I did, there was no one I would have called. No one I would have texted.

Then came college. Like many things, it hit me like a truck, and there I was, the homeschool kid at college looking at all the groups of kids who had their lives planned out. I remember a kid who came in with a full year of credits. He was so far ahead of me and I had only started.

I had to learn how to talk. I went through a struggle phase of friend groups. One where people were nice and we tried to chat. I asked questions and managed to keep a conversation going, but it was an effort. Again, they were nice and kind of made an effort on their end, but it didn’t work out. We were around each other, but there was nothing other than convenience keeping it together.

I found my group and it all got easier. I was the glue. Which was an odd experience for me. Conversations were easy. I learned to speak. It is interesting how much difference that has made. The job that got me here was a low-level, customer-facing position. I spoke more. A lot more. Hours and hours talking. I got good at it. Which, despite all the years I’ve described, is an odd feeling for me.