J-Soft Blog

Friday, April 18, 2003

Small talk: Examining a skill I most definitely lack

What is it exactly? It is the search for a common ground. It is conversation without a foundation, conversation that has yet to grow roots. It is floating in the air not yet aware that you have just run off a cliff, for the moment unaffected by gravity. It is grasping in the dark for a light switch. I've never managed to master it, or even become remotely satisfactory at it.

They say two's company, three's a crowd. Well then, invite a mob or the party's over. I can manage well enough in a group of three or more, though I usually end up mostly listening to the other two conversing. You'd think with all this listening to, essentially other people's converstations, I'd have picked up a thing or two.

So, what seperates small talk from, not small talk? Common experience is what it is. I can manage just fine with those with whom I have a vast library of common experience from which to draw. But, grasp I cannot. Without that library I invariably draw an absolute blank.

Now a dilemma presents itself. After all, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A library of common experience does not magically appear in an instant. Small talk is undoubtedly the most common way to stock the shelves, although I seem to have survived so far without it.
posted by Jesse at 10:03 PM #


Thursday, April 10, 2003

The Teddy Bear with a 10/100 Ethernet switch for a heart
posted by Jesse at 10:46 PM #




Fraud She Wrote

The adventures of an author who writes mystery novels about insurance fraud. Each week she finds herself intimitely involved in a new insurance investigation involving a different group from a seemingly endless pool of old freinds and aquaintances in an endless variety of locations.
posted by Jesse at 10:16 AM #