Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Robert there?
It was a while ago when Robert emailed me that he was ready to be be a B.A.D. blogger. He warned me, though, that if I was as bad at small talk as I profess to be, the resulting conversation could be rather slow. He said that was because he’s writer, not a talker. I told him I wasn’t worried about my ability to people talking with me.
You might call it irony — that we started by talking about bridges — the bridges in Chicago and in Portland. I live in Chicago, and we have lots of them over the river that flows backwards through our city. Bob remembered them and then told me about the bridges of Portland.
I kind of liked the idea of two bloggers who don’t take to small talk starting out by talking about bridges. It seemed to lie a perfect writer’s segue.
Somehow from there we got talking about “the mysteries.” We discussed people who use the details of their job to cloud the issues by making what they do sound “mysterious.” You’ve run into them, I bet. We mentioned the print buyers who say, “Oh no, that will never work on the press,” nixing what they don’t want to do by using the mysteries of the equipment most people don’t know. We talked about folks across every industry who do the same thing.
Then, Bob told me about his grandmother’s attic where he found a love of reading. He said she had a window there with hundreds of books and magazines. He said he’d sit in the window and read. I could picture him perched in the daylight of the attic window, nose in a book, unaware of the rest of the world.
When he spoke of blogging, Bob was speaking of the cosmopolitation nature of the community. “I’ve met people from every corner of the world . . . It’s fascinating . . . I can travel with my computer . . . It’s really fun.”
So was talking our way across bridge with a guy who doesn’t like small talk as much I don’t.
B.A.D. Blogger Quote
It’s truly addictive to find a voice I didn’t know I had. — Robert Hruzek
Stop by Robert’s Blog, Middle Zone Musings, and say hi!
Thanks, Robert, you B.A.D. Blogger!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.
Liz, it was fun to chat with you! Although I’m not sure Mrs. MZM understood what I meant when I told her, “Hey, I talked to Liz Strauss today, and now she says I’m a BAD SOB!”
Hi Bob!
You know, people seem to misunderstand that all of the time. You’d think as writer I might have better communication skills. 🙂
It was a fun conversation, wasn’t it? !! 🙂
I have the exact opposite problem: I love telling stories to people, they are very dynamic and people enjoy them… but when I try to write them down, they suck!
Wanna trade?
Hi Jeremy!
Welcome. I don’t so bad telling stories. It’s real small talk that I’m no good at — you know, talking about the weather and elevator music. 🙂
Stick around here you might find a thing or two about writing. I like to do that too. I bet you write better than your internal editor thinks you do.