When you care about people, and when you pick up everything they are feeling, even if they’re concealing it, then days surrounded by them are exhausting. Most days, I feel like a musician with a finely tuned ear who has been placed in an echo chamber; some days it almost drives me mad.
From my earliest memories, I was attuned to other people’s emotions; I could always tell who was sad, or angry, even when it wasn’t apparent to anyone else. It’s like I have an antenna that’s only tuned to the emotional frequency; and the music is always playing, and loudly, when I’m around people, like a station I can’t shut off.
People mistake my introversion for people aversion, but that’s not it at all — I love people, they just wear me out. I’ve always been terrible at “small talk” for the same reason: I often feel people are concealing what they’d really like to talk about, and when I say so, they usually tell me what’s really on their mind. I’m glad to do it – I was born to do it – but I can only do it for so long before I need rest.
I have developed virtually every solitary hobby known to man (I read; I play a musical instrument; I write music; I play video games; I go on long drives by myself, and so on, ad infinitum); I studied mathematics and became an actuary as the least emotional occupation I could find; I studied philosophy in an attempt, like the ancient stoics, to pass beyond emotion. Not surprisingly, none of that has worked to in any way change the basic problem, which is: being around people wears me down.
Even though I work as an actuary, I am in a position that requires me to lead and interact with people. I can do it, but I look forward to any spare moments I can siphon off the excess of emotions that dealing with people all day gives me. Which is where we arrive at this blog.
Most of what I write about concerns other people’s feelings: at one time, that was the tag line of one of my now defunct blogs. It may seem to defeat the purpose of a blog if it is not personal, but that is my personality: I am a magnet for other people’s emotions. I can’t explain it, but I know it to be true.
The best blogs I know are all blazing with the lives and emotions of their remarkable authors. It’s hard for me to write about my own life, because my own particular emotions and circumstances are just one among many in my head. I wish I could write a ‘purer’ blog, which was about my life and my feelings only, but that’s not the instrument I was given to play. I will continue to write about every thing I feel, even if most of it is second-hand, and even if it results in my maintaining what is more-or-less an “unblog”.
I appreciate all of you who read my (un)blog, and take time to hit “like” or leave comments. I am more grateful to you than I can say.
—- Owen
