The Week Where You Just Might Get a Word in Edgewise? (Week 3)

I talk too much.

I really do.

No, I mean it. Silence makes me really self-conscious and I'm constantly trying to fill it with a bad joke or a question I don't really need an answer to. Anything...anything to fill the void of sound between me and the rest of the world.

I think I miss a lot of what's going on because I'm always doing: talking, jumping, expressing, kidding, joking, giggling, provoking...you name it, I'm probably doing it.

The bus thing this week has given me some quiet rides home sans car radio, sans Ipod, sans pointless conversation and it's been nice, to say the least. I'm amazed at what I've been missing all this time with this obnoxious need to fill the air with....well, me.

So this week, I'm on a diet of sorts. (No, I'm already sick of the veggie diet bs I put myself through for nine days.)

I'm talking about cutting back the noise and the static. Let folks say what they have to say. Listen when Boy Wonder prattles on endlessly about Legos instead of reminding him that SpongeBob is on so he better get the heck outta the kitchen before we change it to CNN. Letting someone finish their question before I try to answer it. Allowing a person to air their grievance without offering the most obvious solution that they should have seen earlier...duh.

Seek out a little more silence, offer a better listener in myself, react a little less....and see what the world's been trying to tell me.

Pshaw.

This'll last a whole, what, 15 minutes?