Essays and Etcetera

I am often reminded of two things at family gatherings. (1) I am not very good at socializing. (2) I am not very good at feasting.

As to the second point, Saturday’s party would be a good example. The main course of the party was sheet pizza. I had four slices of pizza at lunch, along with a sticky bun. That was my feast. I didn’t sit down to another meal for the rest of the day. Later I did have some cookies, and two servings of ice cream, and I munched on various snacks throughout the day. I had plenty to eat. I had no complaints–if I had eaten more some part of my digestive system would have complained. But with such eating constraints I hardly feel like I do the idea of feasting much justice. Finding oneself stuffed after the first course hardly leaves room for that languid festival meal with course following course after course.

Don’t get me wrong–I enjoy eating good food very much. It’s just that I find I rarely feel like I do justice to the abundance of feasts.

In the matter of socializing, my personality contributes to the problem. I am not very good at “social” conversation. Perhaps also called “Talking for the sake of talking.” My nature is to talk with a reason or goal–some subject or piece of information in mind. If I don’t have such I am hard pressed to talk. But also contributing to this lack of social grace is the fact that I am not employed like most people. Everyone else can talk about their jobs and the people in the world, and intelligently commiserate and understand when other people talk about their jobs, and the people in their jobs, etc.

I can’t. My employment has no drama–at least none that can be easily shared with the outside world. Talking about how you argue with yourself about your writing hardly makes for gripping conversation. Or talking about how you are trying to format your book optimally. Or how you are struggling with fears about revision . . . or anything. If I could somehow collect my thoughts about such things in a way that I could talk coherently about, as soon as I began my audience would surely go cross-eyed and pass out on the table. Such conversation has utterly no relevance to their lives.

If one person works in the manufacturing industry and another works in the service industry they can still converse to a great degree because both have job stress, coworker problems and stories, and boss annoyances. There is the great well of fellow-feeling which they can come to and (proverbially) pat each other on the back. For me my boss is myself, my coworker is myself, and all my stress (if any) is self-induced. It is awkward at best to talk about how I irritate myself, how stupid I find myself, and how stressed I am by my writing quality. It sounds neurotic at best, easily ego-centric, and frankly boring. Even I don’t want to talk about how irritated I make myself–I already spend enough time being irritated without hashing it all over again by talking about it.

As a result I often spend much time listening in on the conversations others have about their jobs. And if someone makes a valiant attempt to engage me, it can be painful. On Saturday uncle N turned to me late in the day and said, “Well, I haven’t heard a peep out of you all day. What have you been doing?”

I had to marshal myself together to keep from saying, “Nothing.” But I did little better, going to get some of my publishing work to show him instead of dutifully launching into some engaging conversation. After a few short minutes of glancing at my work the next question comes. “So . . . what is this story about?”

I tried very hard to not say, “Nothing.” But I do scarce better, saying, “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

In retrospect, it is easy for me to criticize myself. How hard would it have been to say, “Oh, it’s a really exciting book about this adventure these people went on! You’ll love it! There is all this danger and excitement!” Such a discourse says nothing at all, really, but it at least might make people interested and engaged. But I am loathe to prattle about what I have sunk so much work into. I have so many hopes, doubts, frustrations, and thoughts crammed into any book I’ve written that asking me to make some pronouncement on it leaves me feeling as if I must utter something profound. Unable to do that, I end up saying something akin to “It’s hard to explain.”

Thus conversation dies like a strangled cat.