words

Words can be a powerful thing - so can the lack of words. I am realizing more and more how vitally important word precision is, and how easily communication can get screwed up. It’s so crazy how easily it gets all jumbled up… how often I communicate something so differently than I had hoped.

Since I was little, I have always felt more comfortable with written communication. Ask my parents. They have great stories from when I was a kid. I would be angry about something, have hurt feelings, or just be unhappy for whatever reason. Instead of crying or screaming about it, I simply shut up. I know, some of you may laugh to know this about me as it takes a great deal of effort to shut me up these days, but when I was young, I didn’t really communicate much. I never really expressed how I was feeling about anything. Sure, I had my moments of laughter and moments of tears, but for the most part, I kept quiet. I have theories as to why that might have been the case, but that’s beside the point. Communication was not a regular practice of mine. However, I did have periods where it was imperative that I let my parents know what was going on in my head and heart. My method? I would write a letter, and set it on their bed roughly two weeks after the fact. For whatever reason, I just didn’t want to “talk” about it. Writing felt so much more natural, and I relied heavily on that method of communication.

Even to this day, I rely much more on written communication that I do verbal communication. Part of that may be due to the fact that I’m an internal processor. As an internal processor, writing is the perfect form of communication because I can sit and think about what I want to write and take my time with it. It doesn’t require the immediacy that verbal processing/communication does. However, I’ve realized that my communication via writing no longer warrants this sort of methodical, diligent thought process. I’ve found that with the convenience of email, the conversational invention of instant messaging, not to mention fairly quick typing skills, I have found that more often than not, I type my thoughts WAY too quickly, and do not give it the thought it deserves. Sadly, I do this with email quite frequently. I will receive an email from a friend, or be thinking about something and sit down to write an email. I simply type it up and hit send without even performing a spell check or reading it over to make sure it’s coherent and exactly what I want to say. With it being the first day of school, and thinking about all the papers I will have to write, I started to think more about the energy that goes into writing papers vs. the energy that goes into writing emails/blog posts/instant messages. Sometimes, if I am not confident in my ability to write a paper, and I really don’t care about it, I’ll sit down, write whatever comes to mind, and carelessly hand it in without looking over it a second time to see that it makes sense. I’ll hand it in blindly. However, if I was writing a paper worth a good portion of my grade, or I felt was really important, I would definitely spend more time on it. I was thinking about the effort I put into my Shakespeare paper last semester. Granted, different elements of the process were required by my professor, but I spent a tremendous amount of time on that paper. I went to the library, I scoured the internet, I took notes, I created an outline, I wrote a rough draft, I revised that rough draft, and wrote a final paper – clear in focus and clear of errors. I began to think about the emails I send, the posts I write, and the instant messages I send. How much time do I spend making sure it reflects exactly what is in my heart? How often to give attention to how it will be received? How often to I write out of unprocessed emotion? The answer to those questions is pretty pathetic… The sad thing is that I then spend so much energy worrying about whether or not it was received the way I had hoped, or making apologies for not communicating clearly. I use the very energy I should have used while writing in the first place.

Today I felt challenged. I felt challenged to spend more time making sure that what I’m communicating is exactly what I want to communicate. I felt challenged to think about the importance of what I’m writing, and whether or not it is necessary. Did I really need to send that email? Should I really say that over instant messenger, or should I save those precious words for an “in-person” interaction? I’m not promising anything… I’m sure I will still have crazy rants about how much I love surfing, how much I hate clowns, and how frightened I am of my Eastern European Film class! I’m sure I’ll still have lame late night instant message conversations where I’ll wake up the next morning and ask myself, “Why in the world did I say that?” However, I’m hoping to work on not be so negligent in my writing. I’m hoping to be more diligent, and do my research. I’m hoping that when I write something, I can set it aside for a period of time, come back to it, and re-evaluate it’s worth. I want to mean what I say the first time, not make excuses for it after the fact. Words are so precious. They’re not to be taken lightly. And I’m hoping that I can more strongly reflect that in the days to come.

With that being said, I need to go back and proof read this before I post it.

(photo courtesy of criswatk at www.sxc.hu)