No Talking Tuesday Year End Wrap Up End of Year Three

December 23, 2010

The third year of my no talking Tuesdays has come and gone with fewer insights and revelations. I feel like I’ve hit my stride with the experiment and it’s become a part of my routine in much the same way brushing my teeth or cutting my fingernails has.

Part of me wants to keep pushing boundaries with it and take on new challenges that extend it’s principles in untested ways. Another side of me sees the calm sustained note the experiments has hit as proof that the positive effects have fully taken hold and I can relax a bit.

In the third year I have consistently shied away from social interactions on Tuesday, and rarely used my notepad to communicate. I’ve also lost the impulse to fight for airtime in conversation. Now I tend to mainly listen, and when I think it’s worth offering up my opinion, I tend to express myself in more abstract ways than the issue at hand. It’s as if conversation has become less a fencing match, and more of a research lab of ideas. I’ve come to loath small talk and personal anecdote.

This is awkward at parties when someone talking about what they study at school and how they plan to spend spring break, finishes and leaves a space for me to talk, and instead I sit staring silently at them. If I do talk, instead of asking “Where are you from?” I’m more likely to ask “Do you have really violent dreams?”

Anyway, the third year has been calm and routine, has made me a social outcast with my inability to see the merit in small talk, and more frequent dropping of social ques.

ali_2010

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