Enough Said

It happened to me again.

I was talking to some and they asked me a small question. A question that should only take one min. or less to answer. Then I realized I had clocked in 3 min. and had wildly swerved off topic. I realized my error and pulled it back around, quickly finishing up in under five min.

I remember when I was in college. I would be doing my laundry and some poor slob would enter the laundry room and say, "So! How you doing?".

Blahdy, blahdy . . . . . .

I would tell them everything. The question was so general I would unload the sum total of my knowledge. Relational thinking would ease from one topic to the next, often without finishing the previous one. Then the person would leave and I would feel a little dirty.

"Why did I tell them all of that stuff? They don't care about all that junk? What's wrong with me?"

I remember that little phrase purring through my grey matter with regularity: "What's wrong with me?"

"O.K. I'll just talk less. That would be good."

Next guy walks in the laundry room and it starts over. It like I was a druggy getting my fix and feeling the guilt the next day. I was convinced that something was wrong with my brain. I decided that I was defective, but had no clue how to fix myself.

That's why the whole Asperger thing has been a life changing realization. Not on the same level as a relationship with God, but it has given me the ability to give myself a break. There is nothing there that I can FIX in one sense. Asperger has a good side and a difficult side.

I have gained valuable information. Simply wanting to say things does not indicate that everything I say has value at all times. So, armed with this information, I purposely block words and consider them twice before letting them through. I change that rule when I'm on stage and I'm really in the zone, then I let it all fly out. Sometimes I'm on stage and I can tell I need to watch what I say, because I'm getting lots of junk. In those cases, I'll go reuse things I've said before in those situations.

The wrap up idea is that I don't give in to every urge simply because it is an urge (how unAmerican of me).

Enough said.