How to talk more?

As Peter Rukavina experienced with Sobey’s Sensory-Friendly shopping hours, you often don’t realize an inconvenience until it’s gone.

So this new anti-anxiety medication that I’m on seems to be having quite an effect already (it’s been a week). The other day I spoke, in public, and while speaking was able to adapt what I was saying and how I was saying it (tone, inflection pattens,…). I did this with an intuition of how I wanted to be in that interaction, and a newfound realization that I had multiple ways of presenting (myself, my thoughts). I was even able to hold space and expand on something that I realized required an explanation after I’d said it. I didn’t realize I’ve had an inner voice saying “shut up! nobody wants to hear you! nobody will get it! Stop talking!” until it was gone. 

So in the spirit of Ton’s article on How To Blog More?, I’m listing some strategies for being comfortable talking/blogging/generally, expressing. This is notes-to-self, audience me, expressed out loud. Not prescriptive.

  • Find some templates for contributing to conversations. “Yes, and…” is a good start. “I was thinking about…” is another. 
  • Keep it concise. I’m gonna struggle with this one because I really like the giant web of connections that my brain makes around any topic. 
  • When contributing to the conversation, consider that the ideas that you bring up are ideas you are directing the audience’s attention to. Make sure that they are where you want to direct attention. 
  • Respect everyone involved, including myself. (inner voice, take note)
  • It’s okay if it’s not complete, if it points in the direction you want to go. Value the dialogue. 

Elmine wrote a beautiful post about the value of communication, and making people feel heard. Ton and Peter are discussing the possibility of creating QSL cards (letterpressed, of course) to celebrate successfully sent webmentions. (I love it, I’m in, I just have to choose a non-doxxable address and figure out how where to put the h-card)

Speaking of, webmentions should be working now, thanks Ton for being my blogfather, checking your site’s logs while at the airport, and explaining to me that I had to link to a specific article, not the blog in general, for the webmention to go somewhere. Ton, is it bad form to webmention multiple of your blog posts in this one? Is that like spamming?