This week, the lovely and marvelous Linda G. Hill, a.k.a. the woman who frees the voices in my head from their drudgery, has given us the freedom to use a word any way we like:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “second.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
It’s a good word for me, because lately, I’ve been thinking about second thoughts. I haven’t been having second thoughts, just thinking about them. Some of the people whose blogs I follow have written about changing the way they write, changing when they write and, sadly, some have decided not to write any longer. One uplifting post was from Ellen, over in the U.K. She wrote about ignoring SEO – You Go Girl! I left her a comment saying that I don’t know how I came to follow her, but that I keep following because she writes well.
I’m not sure how I came to follow most of the folks I follow and I’m not sure how those folks came to follow me. I know some, for example, I met Pacific Paratrooper over at Dan Hen’s blog and I figured if he likes Dan as much as I do, since Dan is a little off course, if the course is the straight and narrow path through the world, then I’m sure to like him (the Paratrooper guy).
I like people who comment, and, for the most part (I’m never really sure if I should use that expression). I know I’m not supposed to use ‘really’ or ‘actually’, but, actually, I don’t care. Sometimes, that’s what I want to say, and Linda doesn’t let us edit. Um, for the most part, I tend to follow them.
The other thing that makes me think about second thoughts is that I listen to people. I don’t think I’m eavesdropping. I wonder if that word stems from the stuff dropping from the eaves of your house. Hang on, I’ll be right back – It does! Well, sorta, it refers to a person who listens from under the eaves. We had a dog once who hated the rain. He would hug the side of the house and pee on the supports for our porch, in order to stay dry.
That’s not what I’m doing, eavesdropping, not peeing on the side of the house. I’m just listening to the people around me. This week, I was in the lounge of a hotel, for a few meetings and meals, and I overheard a lot of people.
The political junk was on and a lot of people were talking about the stuff they heard and I heard more than a few. Let’s see, a couple is two, a few is three, so more than a few…ok, I heard a few people, in response to “who do you like for president?” say things like: “well, so and so said this about him but then this guy said this about her” If I were the kind of person to butt into conversations of this nature, I would have said “Yes, but what do you think? You’re an intelligent person – decide for yourself!”
I don’t seek a lot of outside influence for my decisions, I tend to figure stuff out.
Pam over at Butterfly Sand quipped today:
“It never ceases to amaze me how low our intelligence quotient has fallen.”
(For some unknown reason, I copied that as what is shown below. I’m adding this after Pam’s comment, pointing out my error, ‘cuz I can’t fix this. In any case, her quip inspired this train of though, even if it left the tracks)
“We remain intelligent, but we suppress our intelligence with the opinions of others.”
I think the forces acting on us to suppress our intelligence are the same ones that cause us to want to be popular. I have an advantage here. Being an introvert and a nerd, I dropped my pursuit of popular long ago. I don’t even do popular things. Pokémon Go is popular today. I didn’t download it. I overheard someone talk about something they learned from Pokémon Go, and I realized that they could have learned that exact thing by reading my blog – I wrote about it over a year ago. Maybe Pokémon reads my blog.
There’s one exception to my rule: OK, it’s really not so much a rule as it is just a thing. If I didn’t dislike the expression “it is what it is” so much, I’d use it here. Anyway, sometimes, what I like becomes popular. Maybe I liked it first, maybe I came to like it independently, but I usually don’t come to like something because it’s popular to do so.
For example, I liked Pink Floyd way before that band was popular. Way before Dark Side of the Moon. I liked Meddle. I liked Ummagumma. I liked Obscured by Clouds. On the other hand, I wasn’t a big fan of the Beatles when they were the huge thing that they were. I think they were playing to an audience at first. Kinda like manipulating the SEO of the day. What did I know? I was 8. I grew to like them when they started making interesting music and I really enjoyed the early independent works of the band members after they broke up, particularly John Lennon.
Interestingly enough – I also always wonder about using that expressions, I mean how much interesting is enough? Is interestingly enough just barely over the line from meh? Where was I? Oh, John Lennon, yeah, he sent me email today. I didn’t notice at the time, I was asleep. I really didn’t notice until a few minutes ago because I didn’t check my spam folder this morning. That’s where John was. Actually, he’s dead, but…
Wow, I’m way over my word count. I’ll leave you with a few pictures of our second Irish Setter, Reilly. When it rained, he peed on the corner porch post, which he eventually destroyed.
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