I’m not a people person….

Sat on a train trying to work out a sensible order for the blog posts. They are in the first instance planned to be a reflection/evaluation of past memories and experiences in the hope that this leads me to understand the person I am now and assess my readiness for becoming the grown up that I assume I should be when I turn 40

In reality they will no doubt end up as the meandering musings of a guy who spends to much time travelling the country by train, too much time on my hands and without the simple social skills to be able to or want to have a conversation with the person next to me

Which leads me to wonder what is it that makes me that way?

I am not shy by any stretch of the imagination but I don’t initiate conversation with strangers, to be honest in some circumstances I don’t even talk to friends

At work I’m the complete opposite although a manager once told me I wasn’t a people person. Which I dispute but there is obviously something about my personality that made her come to that conclusion…

So is there something from my childhood I can attribute to this?

I remember as a child having a problem saying certain words and often struggling to get a sentence out. I’m not sure if it would be considered a stutter but there was something that made me stumble over words as I spoke

I vaguely remember some level of speech therapy but I’m not sure if that is a true memory. It may just have been a teacher that offered me help and over time I’ve built that up to be bigger than it actually was

That being said it’s still a problem that persists even now. Not in a stutter specifically although when faced with someone with a pronounced stutter I have in the past found myself mirroring them with some level of sympathy stutter. 

It’s like if you pair up people with Tourette’s they will set off one another’s ticks. Not to the same extreme level but there must be something lying semi dormant within my brain that picks up on their stutter. Thankfully it’s never been taken as me openly mocking them 

As a child I can’t recall being a talker. My kids will talk from the moment they wake till the moment they eventually fall asleep. A trait they get from their mother and that’s a good thing don’t get me wrong

They incessantly ask questions, they always want to know stuff and that is great to see. It can be very annoying when you’re tired but it would never be something I would want them to stop as much as I roll my eyes when my son asks questions like:

‘If you were a professional rugby player which team would you play for ?’

I don’t even play amateur rugby so playing in a professional capacity is a huge leap by any stretch of the imagination but I love the fact that his mind is always whirring, processing information and thinking of as many questions as possible to strengthen his understanding. 

Again it’s a trait I have at work, perhaps that’s why I don’t ask too many questions at home. I am much more likely to accept stuff at face value in my personal life than at work

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing but it hasn’t got me into too much trouble so far….

But I do think that is part of the reason why people think I am not a people person. It’s not that I don’t care enough to ask questions but sometimes I just don’t care enough to ask questions 

Let me clarify what I mean. Sometimes the inane conversations that people have day to day make me want to rip my own eye balls out of my head and for that reason there are occasions when I will choose not to engage.

I can read the prompts from people when it’s clear they want to talk but I don’t want to so I don’t…

Does that make me a bad person. I’m not rude; not directly anyway but on reflection me feeling like I can pick and choose when I talk to people like my time is far too important makes me sound like a complete narcissistic arsehole

Let me pause on that thought for a second and consider it again…..

Nope. Still feel like an arsehole!!

Can I point at my linguistic languidity as a child as some kind of an excuse or at least a partial explanation?

Yes I still struggle in certain situations. I will still trip over sentences or struggle to recall words that had been on the tip of my tongue only seconds earlier but at work I am a confident speaker. I will happily address crowds of varying numbers with little to no preparation so the ability is there within but there is something in my personality that makes the choice to at times avoid human interaction 

I even do it with phone calls. I would always text in the first instance

Maybe because this allows me to control the conversation. Is this me trying to remove the likelihood of having to embark on a conversation that I have little to no interest in having

As I write I’m considering whether this is because I only talk to people when I want something or if I want to tell them something that is important to me. Again another realisation that perhaps I am more selfish than I had first considered

Maybe I’m not a people person…

This is definitely not the grown up that I should be or would ever want to be. As a parent you always want to make sure you teach your kids the right way but definitely in this case I should be taking the lead from my children 

I may be nearly 40 but I have definitely not reached my limit in terms of what I can learn. From adults but also perhaps at times from the younger generations 

It’s never too late to change. To be the best version of yourself that you can be

I know that human interaction is a wondrous thing. There are countless things to learn from a word with a friend or a conversation with a stranger. The ability to listen is a forgotten art. In current times especially everyone has an opinion on everything. 

Knowledge is power but ignoring alternative views will only give you a one sided view of the world

So taking the lead from my children I will force myself to step out of my comfort zone before I become a stuck in my ways middle age man