Tag: blogging

I am A Word Collector

I recently watched a new episode of Last Tango In Halifax which is a British TV show about two retirees who were in love in their youth meeting again and getting married. I have to say I am watching much more British TV now than ever before. Endevour is probably my favorite. But, that’s another post…

Anyway, on that show, one of the retirees mentioned that a young boy that he was trying to help was a collector of words. I had never heard that phrase before and since being a wordsmith the phrase it immediately attached itself to a permanent part of my brain. 🤓

It brought back the discussion between Polonius and Hamlet as shown here. Since I have already shown so much of myself here I will come out and say that I was probably one of the few high school kids who actually enjoyed reading Shakespeare in my high school English classes. Most of the kids complained that someone needs to put out an interpretation of his plays so that they are more meaningful. But, to me, the Old English words of Shakespeare are what makes his plays so incredible. I suspect he labored over every sentence to make sure each word was the perfect one for that particular dialogue.

I have mentioned several times before that I too labor over all the words in my blogs. Each post usually goes through at least a half dozen audits to make sure I have chosen the most appropriate word for the circumstance. But sometimes, I admit that some of my posts are rather hurried and reading them later I am embarrassed that they were written so poorly. 😖 In fact, many times I will then go and do another edit even though it is pretty unlikely that anyone will ever read them the second time. I hope I never get famous (fat chance of that!!) because I am just not good at impromptu conversations such as unscripted interviews. While I pride myself on the written word I am a terrible public speaker. What I write can always be edited a few times before people are exposed to it. Another reason is that my brain is a terrible censor. I usually blurt out whatever I am thinking without considering if it that is appropriate. I blame my Aspie traits for that.

I am a collector of words

Since I have been deaf for more than 30 years now a very large part of each day is spent with viewing words. A few months ago I figured out (for whatever reason, I have no idea) That I have written about thirty novels worth of words on my various blogs. That puts me ahead of John Grisham for word count, but definitely not by $/word. 🤪 Another way to put it is that I have written the equivalent of four Bibles. Yep, I am definitely a collector of words… and proud of that fact.

Being on the Margins Makes Isolation More Tolerable

One of the biggest complaints I hear about the pandemic is the isolation that many people feel because they are off by themselves. When you live on the margins having more time alone is most often just a fact of life, especially for those of us who have significant Aspie traits or are deaf and for me, that is both.

Over the years I have come to enjoy my alone time more and more. I simply don’t depend on others to make my days enjoyable anymore, if I really ever did. I have spent my whole life trying to figure out what people expect from me. I have never answered that question to my satisfaction. When I finally realized that unanswered question is most likely due to my Aspie traits things became more settled. I am not a good communicator when it comes to one-on-one type things, so I have no really close friends to share my life with.

In groups, I struggle with trying to figure out when it was my time to say something. When I became deaf thirty-some years ago that problem was magnified by a factor of ten. It seems that almost no one has the patience to try to include me in casual conversations. I have come to understand that and don’t really have any ill feeling about it anymore. That is just the way it is when you are deaf and living in a hearing world. I live on the margins…

Ok, let’s finally spin this post around to the title. 🥴 Because of these type problems with group and one-on-one conversations I have learned to enjoy my own company more and more as the years have gone by. I gave a presentation to a national organization a few decades ago declaring that one of the things I miss the most because of being deaf is chit-chat. That is, the daily off-the-cuff stuff that we share with others throughout the day. That is still true for me but not to the magnitude it once was.

Maybe it is by necessity, but it is now easy for me to spend the whole day totally by myself. In fact, I have come to depend on that when I am writing about ten posts a week on my blogs. My blogs give me a purpose that is still manageable with my current life circumstances.

In some serendipitous way, I think my somewhat forced isolation has allowed me to fulfill one of my primary passions in life. I have always enjoyed writing and telling stories. I just chose the wrong occupation to do much of that, but now that I have been retired for more than twenty years I have finally found what I really enjoy doing, and that is blogging in five-hundred words or less. That never would have happened if I were not living on the margins…