Bitter Running Commentary

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Thanks guys. Back to you Captain Obvious.

Umm, I'm Britney. Obviously.

Umm, I’m Britney. Obviously.

If you’re an introvert like me, you probably have a dialogue going on in your head a vast majority of the time. The information highway in your brain has flying cars and runaway trains going 350 mph, above the speed limit. Every once in a while, your brain officer pulls over one of these thoughts long enough to write it a ticket and tells it to slow down long enough to make it into more than an idea. The problem with my brain is that the ideas are brought to the Home Depot center of my brain, but no one there is smart enough to build this idea into something tangible.  So the ideas just continue to go to the writer’s center, where they turn it into a bitter post, in hopes that some OTHER person that knows how to make things comes crashing through the door like the Kool-Aid man and says”Here’s a million dollars. Can we make that idea into a product?” When the Kool-Aid man(or Kool-Aid Woman) comes along, that’s when we start rolling in the 10’s of dollars and I can start paying for my lunch every day.

Here's your million dollars, sir.

Here’s your million dollars, sir.

Thankfully, I only have that commentary going on inside my brain so no one else has to hear it. But have you ever watch an athletic event? For three to three and a half solid hours you have this duo or trio of people telling you exactly what your brain could tell you if it watched in silence. I don’t know who voted to give these people jobs and allow them to talk endlessly about a guard throwing a pass to a forward, or a center slamming it in, but I don’t think any of us really need the things they say to understand what is going on. All I need is to know if someone is losing or winning is to listen to the crowd.

Right?

Right Elaine?

Maybe some people need to be told everything. Or maybe they just love hearing the conversation, because they want to be a part of it. Maybe people work everything out by talking it out. I know extroverted people that are constantly talking, gibber gabbering, mumbling, jawing, whatever you want to call it every moment they spent on the weekend. Every Monday they tell someone about their weekend. They woke up, ate breakfast, put their plate in the sink, got a sponge, got some suds, whetted the sponge, rotated the sponge on the plate, yadda yadda yadda, at least that is what I want them to say. But they don’t and they continue to give every detail of everything they did. Perhaps they are practicing to be a commentator on television?

I’ve had multiple bosses tell me that I need to be more vocal. I’m plenty loud if you ask me. So you want me to be louder? Shall I shout my bitterness out whenever a customer frustrates me? Should I go on and on about the same problems I hashed and rehashed with them and continue to get no solution out of it? Why do we continue to have meetings every single month, when the same stuff comes up, and the same non actions come out of them? Just so we can pretend to be productive and say we talked out things?

Is this more vocal enough for you?

Is this more vocal enough for you?

And what is with the running commentary? Can we slow that thing to a crawl? Or better yet a sit it on a comfortable couch? The bitterness comes from the fact that there will always be this bitter clash of talking too much or not talking enough. Trust me, I have commentary. But it is my head. Between the suave, handsome stand up comedian type gentlebitterperson presenting the world’s most perfect idea for the Shark Tank and a jovial Tank that just can’t stop tripping over each other to get a 1% percentage of my company that will make billions.

Yeah, it is insane, but at least you don’t have to hear it. As opposed me having to hear the insanely boring play-by-play of someone’s weekend. Or the same “Good Morning!” I have to hear every time I’m knee deep in a customer’s problem that won’t go away, while they are sipping on their coffee, easing into the day. Or the “hey we need to hear more from you” comment that drives me up the wall and down the roller coaster.

Here

I would go there to get a part in that movie. 

It’s 2016 and we’ve discovered Transformers on the Moon for goodness sake (oh, that was in 1969?), I mean, we’ve put a rover on Mars for goodness sake, why can’t we figure out that introverts have great ideas, you just need to let them be given in their time. And they need to be given their headspace if you want them to be at their best. And I guess extroverts need someone to babble to all the time so they can be at their best.

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Commentary Ben

26 thoughts on “Bitter Running Commentary”

  2. Pingback: Posts of Note (Week 4) – A Kinder Way

  4. Richie Benaud the TV cricket commentatator made a thing of not mentioning the blindingly obvious and was the best of the lot. Less is indeed more. His rules were:

    1 Never ask for a statement.
    2 Remember the value of a pause.
    3 There are no teams in the world called ‘we’ or ‘they’.
    4 Avoid cliches and banalities, such as ‘he’s hit that to the boundary’, ‘he won’t want to get out now’, ‘of course’, ‘as you can see on the screen’.
    5 The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bears any relation to a dropped catch.
    6 Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth.
    7 Concentrate fiercely at all times.
    8 Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously, and have fun.

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    • Take it from a Cricket commentator. The obvious statements kill me. And they constant jabbering too. And let some moments breathe, (or the value of a pause as Richie said). If only my son could learn the value of pause….

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  5. My husband feels compelled to “bounce stuff off me” as his way to “process.” I hear all kinds of merde about computers and networks and bridges. I want to bounce stuff off of him when he does that. Like rocks.

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  6. The trick is to be an ambivert. That way you can think up ideas, and also get them out. This, however, compromises the quality of those ideas. But no problem. Mediocre ideas are what this world is built on.

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    • That what I constantly think when I go look at my notes and wonder why the heck writing about something would ever be something I would want to write about. And sometimes I look back at old posts (pretty rarely actually) and wonder how in the heck I wrote so horribly or so well. Either way, sometimes it doesn’t ever seem to be possible I wrote something.

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