The communication thing.
Oct. 7th, 2009 01:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boxofdelights[In which I am talking to my husband about my reaction to the latest communication from the housepainter.]
Me: "Fine! Here's your money! And keep an eye out for my essay, 'How to turn a disappointed customer into a customer who is VIBRATING WITH RAGE, in five easy emails, each with its own special fauxpology!'"
Hugh: Is that what you wrote back?
Me: ...No. I'm not going to waste a line like that on him. He wouldn't enjoy it.
I should write that essay for you, dear readers, because you would enjoy it, but it'll have to wait until I can look back on it and laugh, because with me, VIBRATING WITH RAGE is more like vomiting with rage, and I would prefer not to.
Earlier, I told Hugh, "The human communication thing. I suck at it. I should stop."
He said, "You can't stop. Well, there's one way you could stop."
I said, "OKAY FINE. I should MINIMIZE my exposure to it."
Not seriously. Except for the fact that I suck at it.
Hugh reads my public LJ posts, and sometimes reads the comments. He is impressed by my kind and helpful friendslist. When I write about a problem and get reams of kind and helpful advice, he is incredulous. "Why don't you respond to them?" he asks. I say, "...."
It's the communication thing. I have some deficiencies there. After I write, I am spent. There is a significant refractory period before I can compose anything new.
Terrible metaphor.
Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments? Would it help at all if I said something perfunctory like 'Thank you'? Can you suggest anything that would help?
I do appreciate you. I do wish to become better at expressing it.
Me: "Fine! Here's your money! And keep an eye out for my essay, 'How to turn a disappointed customer into a customer who is VIBRATING WITH RAGE, in five easy emails, each with its own special fauxpology!'"
Hugh: Is that what you wrote back?
Me: ...No. I'm not going to waste a line like that on him. He wouldn't enjoy it.
I should write that essay for you, dear readers, because you would enjoy it, but it'll have to wait until I can look back on it and laugh, because with me, VIBRATING WITH RAGE is more like vomiting with rage, and I would prefer not to.
Earlier, I told Hugh, "The human communication thing. I suck at it. I should stop."
He said, "You can't stop. Well, there's one way you could stop."
I said, "OKAY FINE. I should MINIMIZE my exposure to it."
Not seriously. Except for the fact that I suck at it.
Hugh reads my public LJ posts, and sometimes reads the comments. He is impressed by my kind and helpful friendslist. When I write about a problem and get reams of kind and helpful advice, he is incredulous. "Why don't you respond to them?" he asks. I say, "...."
It's the communication thing. I have some deficiencies there. After I write, I am spent. There is a significant refractory period before I can compose anything new.
Terrible metaphor.
Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments? Would it help at all if I said something perfunctory like 'Thank you'? Can you suggest anything that would help?
I do appreciate you. I do wish to become better at expressing it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 02:22 pm (UTC)No, I'm not. Because (a) I know as well as anyone that for many of us Internet Girls, there is only so much communication-brain available on any given day, and you may well have used all that is available by the time you're done posting something; (b) also, you have things to do besides sit at the keyboard and respond to comments, even if you'd rather be doing that; and (c), the Curse of Chit-chat.
That is, if someone makes a comment that sparks further conversation, well and good (and I know I've seen you respond to comments when that happens). But when the post-and-comment make for, as it were, a complete conversational unit -- say, complaint-and-rueful-sympathy -- it makes for a natural stopping point. In RL, the conversation would meander in other directions from there; in comment threads, there's nowhere for it to go that doesn't lurch off into a desultory exchange of what the linguists call "phatic" communication. Somebody has to be the one to call a halt before that happens, and I've occasionally been downright grateful when someone else does it for me.