Writing vs social situations

I love writing. More than speaking, more than socializing, more than messaging, calling, conversing, arguing ... more than anything. I am that egocentric. I always find something to write about, just as there is always something to think about. What I want, my little life, my hopes, dreams, happenings... What I did, what I should have done, what I yet should do, what is right or wrong or in the middle, every side of every story, endless babbling... And I find it extremely hard to stop. When I am writing I go with the flow, that special feeling of concentration, where nearly nothing disturbs you. You can go on and on and enjoy it and think of nothing else.

Sometimes I get lost in the details, so much so, that I forget, what it was I wanted to write about. For example, just this week, I tried to write a short letter to a friend of mine, to say how sorry I am that I haven't wrote while I was at home with my hardly sick son and explain why and tell him I didn't find some books he recommended. I did so in an e-mail, but I believe that its printout might have been somewhere around two times A4.

I probably scare people I write with never to write with me just by the enormous size of my letters. Some special people still do - thank you for that! But there is more than one sad thing about writing such long letters. Oh, everybody says at first, that they love long letters - and it is very exciting to get a letter where there is more than a few lines, but it doesn't stay exciting. For one thing, if they themselves don't like writing that much, then it will be hard for them to come up with as long and as dense a letter. And if they don't, they feel they are somewhat less than the one writing so long letters (that's my theory only, I am not really someone in the position to say too much about it) and when you feel bad, then you won't write. The other thing is, people are always in a hurry, me as much as anybody. Oh, I'd love to write, I'd love to fill this blog and everybody's inbox and all the bookcases with my writings, yet I rarely have the time. I rarely have the time to answer letters as well. More so because I know, that when I start, I can't stop and it takes time. And time - that precious time! - if only we had more of it for usage every day. There are powerful contenders for my time (dear child, work, friends, reading, etc) and so the writing is something that is easily put aside. It's so easy to think "I'll do it some other time", but you never find the other time... Well, going back to the writing - when I have time for writing rarely, I answer mail infrequently, people have taken offense and forgotten me before they get my answer. Sometimes, when I see, that too much time has passed, I even do not write back, believing these things to be true without confirming.

And funny thing is, that constantly babbling person never gets out in the public. The quietness rises exponentially with every added person in hearing distance - meaning alone I am the most sociable, talkative and active. Eye-to-eye I might find rapport and it seems rather like a conversation. Threesome, it gets already tricky, if everybody aren't good friends of mine (and even then I am the quiet one). Bigger group and you hardly ever hear my voice.

In social situations I am rather egocentric in another way. That is, I listen as long as anybody talks and rarely open my mouth when not addressed directly. On rare occasions I find a way to further the conversation - or more interesting cases, the argument - by adding a small remark when people find nothing to say. And then I can go on listening. It is untypical to think of quiet people in public as egocentric, but I am. I don't need to put myself out there to torn to pieces by any number of critical remarks, I rather further my knowledge and understanding by carefully and attentively listening and learning everything possible. Then I can really feel good about myself, believing that only I know the truth, only I of them all understand both sides of the problem... And it never occurs to me to tell about it.

Anyway, people who know me only in public might be very surprised to get my e-mails. Or read my blog, if anyone ever thinks of it. A nobody becomes somebody. Somebody with surprisingly complex past, unusual thoughts and dreams. Somebody surprisingly self-confident and happy about herself. But there are some that know me both ways. Some who have long conversations with me in one of the more popular messengers and then see me in the hallway and just say "Hi!", if even that. They must be really confused about me, but that's exactly who I am, they have got the most real picture of me. That is who I am, full of contradictions, multiple-sided and too complex to understand. Yet just as simple as everybody else. Just another real person.