Time in the world (to talk)

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I’m talkative. When I was little, my Dad gave us a word per week in the summer. They ended up each pertaining to qualities about us. My oldest brother got something that meant glum and moody. All my next oldest brother’s were words such as, “erudite”. (My mom begged for a word; he only gave her one: callipygous.) Mine for the summer were these: loquacious, verbose, garrulous, and gesticulate (I talked even when my mouth wasn’t moving).

Whenever I get on AIM, or any chatting device, I end up talking to people I haven’t talked to in years. This is a many splendid thing, except that it takes approximately nine hours, and by the time all the conversation windows get clicked closed, I’m still not done:
1) With the dishes
2) With my writing
3) With my laundry
4) Watching Important Things, such as James Harriot and 80s baseball anime
5) Talking to friends I haven’t talked to in years.

The end result? I do not get on AIM. I do not chat. I do not pass go.

Most things end up being like this with me. The other day at movie night, I had all sorts of thoughts about the movie! But lots of people were talking, and my thoughts were long, and complicated, and very involved, and mostly for the ears of my_daroga and Mr. Daroga. The point is though, I ended up not saying anything, because I knew it would take too long, and that the kind of discussion I wanted would not result from it.

I do this with lj. I have a million things I could post about, but don’t, because it will take too long. I feel like I’m wasting time; I feel in the end I still won’t say what I mean anyway; I feel people won’t read it because it’s too long; I won’t have time for the discussion because it will be too involved, etc etc. It’s part of my weird lj neurosis, which I believe I have discussed elsewhere.

It makes me sad. LJ is particularly cool because I think you can have the involved conversations I want to have on it. The formatting is fine for long discussion, plus the people here are thoughtful, and when they’re not, I don’t have to know that they didn’t listen to me. I don’t have to see blank faces or people trying to politely disengage from the conversation; I just get people not commenting. Which is fine! Furthermore all this gets recorded, both my insanely long thoughts and people’s insanely long thoughts back. It is perfect for me in so many ways!

Anyway, what I’ve decided to do is try to spend 15 minutes a day making a post. I spent 15 minutes on this one, and even though it’s stressing me out to cut it off here, maybe it will inspire me to keep going, and finally get some thoughts out. Some of it is writing, some fanfic, lots of thoughts about writing, and life in general. It may turn out to be fairly boring, but maybe I won’t feel such regret about having this wonderful tool and not using it appropriately.

. . . Watch me only do the 15 minute thing until tomorrow. I guess it’s worth the effort.