I'm thinking about the skills that I have that I'm not necessarily proud of, or necessarily going to use any time soon. I know how to work a room. I know how to street fight. I know how to code in Visual Basic. I know how to body surf. We all have skills and knowledge that we possess but don't necessarily leverage or want to leverage. I know how to babysit but I don't want to. Our knowledge of the world is mismatched to our use of that knowledge. We have theories the meet reality and we adjust accordingly. Sometimes what we thought was valuable in theory turned out to be useless, or we just never got a chance to express ourselves in that particular way. I think I would have been a good contestant on 'Win Ben Stein's Money" but I missed my appointment at the studio. I'll never know. On the other hand there's sometimes pure luck or chance that makes the difference in what you achieve in which contexts.
Somebody told me today that they'd like to respond to me on Facebook, but it's Facebook so they don't want to.
I've had the advantage of having been on the web for over 20 years. In addition to that I have ascended various ladders in school, work, church and the streets. Most importantly I've worked with many folks for whom English is a second language and I have had media exposure in politics. I think that it is only when you've worked skills in these multiple arenas that you know what you can get away with saying and what might come back to bite you in the ass.
Attention. Do you get it? Do you deserve it? What is your likelihood of getting it on the positive or the negative side? It's a new skill we have to develop in this era of communications.
If the NSA can see anything, what do I care what they see? If somebody could X-ray my house, what possessions that I have would I put in lead boxes? If I wrote down everything I thought and could retreive it all, how much would I go back to? How much would anyone else go back to?
These are more prosaic questions because I've answered them for myself. I first began thinking about all of this back when I turned 30 and started reading my diary out loud as a performance poet. That's one of the reasons I never use emoticons or say 'IMHO'. I am who I am, I say what I say, I do what I do. If you don't understand me, it's your fault. But my curiousity about this subject was piqued about the power aspect implied in the self-censorship of the FB commenter.
There must be some interesting kinds of fears involved if you haven't been so very well self-directed and consciously deliberate about what you say and what you expect to happen when you say what you say and do what you do. So why are you out there saying anything at all? Are you getting your feet wet? Are you trying to become friends? Do you have an agenda? Are you merely compulsive?
Food for thought. If your life was an open book, who would you expect to pick up the book and read it? Skim it? Critique it? Rake you over the coals about it? Sing praises about it? Be bored to death about it? Be intrigued and surprised by it?
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