Gain communication skills, loose others?

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Scoots5012
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Joined: 1 Jul 2004
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,397
Location: Cedar Rapids Iowa

12 Apr 2010, 6:31 am

Long timers here have noticed that in the past two years, the quantity and quality of my output here on this board has dropped off quite a bit. During that time I've had to learn and become rather proficient at writing for the medium of television where time is measured in 30th's of a second and every word needs to have maximum impact. When I sit down here and try to type out a post, I find my brain wanting to revert to that same method of writing for a post here and I often find myself not being able to come up with a coherent response that doesn't read like an associated press wire story. The same thing holds true for other mediums like e-mail, IM and others. Believe it or not, at one point here when there was a stats page that you could go to for board info, I was top poster here for some time. I'm probably the least witty and verbose person on earth - it always takes me a few seconds to formulate a verbal response to a question and much longer to process something where emotion is behind the statement which is why I've always liked forums as they don't work in real time. But now I feel I like my brain is getting stuck in a mode I don't want it to be in and I don't know how to get it unstuck.

This post took me 30 minutes to write BTW.


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shukri
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Joined: 9 Aug 2006
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Posts: 87
Location: Denmark

12 Apr 2010, 8:07 am

Wow, this is spooky. You're totally speaking for me. Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to express myself, through writing or drawing or what not. I've been very clumsy at it, and it was only recently that I forced myself to approach it in new ways, and somehow I started getting it right, difficult as it was. The problem now though is that once I get locked into one form of expression (say photography, and a particular style at that), then I lose my ability to just about anything else. I feel like an oil tanker - slow, and with multi-mile turning radius.

I don't have a way around it. I just accept that I have periods when I'll do one thing and not another, and give myself several days to change modes. I write (screenplays, short stories and a political blog), I draw, and I code - just never more than one at a time.