Tell Me About Yourself…If You Must

tyunglebower ♦ February 28, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

If you’re a writer, you are lightyears ahead of the game if you love to talk to strangers, especially if you love talking about yourself. The great irony of a words-based calling is that the need to construct sentences and words in an efficient, evocative, memorable manner does not stop even with the completion of your final draft. In many ways it has only begun.

Which is why, I say again, if you are both an author, and someone who counts yourself as among your favorite topics of conversation, along with your work, you are way out on front.

You are twice as far out front of the likes of me; I don’t tend to talk about myself fro an extended period of time unless asked. And I am usually not asked.

It is not at all hyperbole to say I never initiate talk of myself or my work. It does not happen. And if this is under “never,” approaching a stranger to do so would fall under the highly scientific category of “never-ever.”

You might be under the impression I never market my work. That’s not true, as you can find me talking about projects and products here on the website, and on my increasingly unused TikTok account. I play up my accomplishments as best as I can given the nature of both my personality and my brain. (I have written about this previously in my Autistic Writer Series from last year if you’d like to check that out.) But when it comes to soft sells, and conversing and “getting out there,” for the most part I don’t because in one part I can’t.

I was not cursed/blessed with the Autistic trait f not knowing when someone is listening. If anything, when people are not listening to me, truly not processing and seeking to learn from what I’m sharing, I tend to know it. Sense it. And talking in most cases to people I barely/do not know is enough of an energy suck. When the other party is clearly not interested in what I’m saying it goes well beyond an energy drain—it’s becomes mentally crippling.

You can perhaps imagine why then I don’t engage in such conversation, talk, chatter, whatever, when the risk of enduring the “I’m only pretending to care,” aura from the other person is so high.

And it is high.

I like to hope that in at least half the cases nobody pays much attention to anything or anyone anymore—that we are all adrift in the flood waters of polite-but-empty attention somehow simultaneously with a drought of interest in other people and their story. That in the social media influencer society of smart phone ubiquity and Brand Name Noise, the sort of imagination and wonder, interest and intrigue I hope to inspire with my craft is dying up more and more each day.

Yes. I tell myself that, not willing to consider the alternate in full—that I’m a bore that produces boring things nobody cares about.

In either sad case, the reflex within me to say less and less about what I do and create multiplies almost with every thing I make available. This is turn feeds the Oblivion Monster, swallowing what chances I have to catch the eye/ear of those most likely to enjoy my work.

Because I also want to avoid vacuous blather when I speak. I have to listen to and watch and read enough of it today, the last thing I want to do is contribute to that mind-anesthetizing glut. I want what I say even about my own work to have substance. So I opt to say even less.

All this by way of saying that there are times we as creatives, and consumers or creativity have to make the choice to be interested. Interest and attention will not always grab us and shake us anymore. There is too much out there competing for our five seconds in the Starbucks line. We need to seek out and engage with people with sincerity. We may not buy their exact product, but we should want to know why they made it.

Nobody owes me or you anything, but in a society of AI and junk-streaming-services of the month, I’d like to see all of us actively choose to embrace and discover, not merely stumble upon independent creative endeavors. With this mindset, you might just find more that speaks to you.

And it would make it a hell of a lot easier for me to speak to you about what I’m creating.