Quiet - Born To Talk

The title of this blog probably comes as surprise to you, as you must know by now; quiet is not my favorite form of communication. Quite the opposite. I have notes to bolster my confidence; i.e. “Manage Your Expectations” “Patience” but also the continuous misspellings of words I use regularly are on a running list.

Do you have some mental blocks as well? You would think after a bit of practice I could conquer the correct spelling. I’ve actually impressed myself using two of those words in my first paragraph.

Quiet and Quite. Sure I know the difference, but if you said, quickly, “I’ll give you ten bucks, spell Quiet”…I would take a deep breath (not breathe, another one of those words on the list) and take a stab at it. I think about if I were in the library, how it is spelled. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been in a library for quite some time!! Yikes, I did it again!! Both words used to describe a thought.

Here’s another troubling one. Inconvenience. I just can’t keep that straight and it’s inconvenient to constantly look it up or count on spell check. When I think about how I spell words incorrectly, it occurs to me, that I probably mispronounce the word to start with.

My life is rich and full and yet, I continue to add on new opportunities. The latest is Toastmasters, International. I had the preconceived notion that Toastmasters was a group of people that wanted to overcome the fear of public speaking. If that’s your objective, I believe those are obstacles that can be overcome.

For me, there isn’t a fear of speaking, hence Born To Talk, but what this organization represents is an opportunity for improving public speaking whether you are fearful or not. It requires “quick thinking” skills to speak about subjects without knowing ahead of time what your question may be. There are timers, evaluators, even the “ah, um” counter along with workbooks and guidelines. I’m actually very excited about the possibilities. There are also prepared speeches that are evaulated.

Yesterday, the Table Topic was “Quiet.” My mind is racing in anticipation, me talking about being quiet, seems like an oxymoron. I was able to add a little humor when I was asked about how I spend my time being quiet. The speaker used the term “soundscape.” I liked how that sounded as I see and understand landscape and seacape, but had never given much thought to how sound impacts our lives.

Living in close proximity to a large International Airport, I take the soundscape around me for granted. I don’t even hear the planes, while others that visit, wonder how I can stand the noise.

After the meeting, I decided to challenge myself in a quiet experience. I grabbed my newest camera with a longer zoom range and went to the local lagoon, not far from my house. The Pacific Ocean is just separated by the sand and a small street with the lagoon on the east side of the street.

I expected to see ducks, and geese and seagulls. I wasn’t disapointed, au contraire. I know you are wondering where the pictures are; as they tend to drive these blogs.

This time I wanted to set up why I was taking these pictures and to also cull the 80 pictures I took during a quiet time, to a reasonable amount. Oh yes, there were planes off in the distance. And a lady from Chicago wanted me to take a picture of her for her snowed in family. Other than that, I was in silence with my thoughts and camera.

I actually enjoyed this quiet time and I think I can easily spell it without wondering any longer if the “i” comes before or after the “t.”

Ducks:

Canada Geese…Honkers! They disrupted the quiet!

Coots:There was a clamor of excitement! You will soon see why.

Where is everyone going? You’ve heard of Larry Bird, the basketball player or perhaps you remember Former President Johnson’s wife’s nickname…meet Lady Bird!