When I Realize My Patterns

 

As I often say, I noticed something about myself—something to do with the topics I bring up in conversation and even writing. The topic I bring up of my own accord may be something I can't solve or understand. I may be bothered or frustrated.  I rarely bring up topics of things I am satisfied with to a degree of monotony. 

I really enjoy cooking. Other than a passing mention about liking to work with food, I don’t talk about it. I have my likes and dislikes, my ways of doing things, and the equipment and (a lack of) recipes I use. Probably no one besides myself (now you know too.) knows I only like one kitchen knife we have. It has a rounded tip, a loved handle, and it’s the perfect size for most everything. The cooking saga people hear about is when I ruined a box cake—which is actually possible. 

I write for a newspaper. I really like my job; it is awesome, and other than my standard four sentences about what my job is, I don’t really talk about. I do talk about the subject I am wrestling into an article.

I usually don’t talk about my sewing, the magazine, my socks, or whether I think my dog can sleep on my bed. I have already figured those things out, and they only receive attention when there is a problem. 

When I was trying to figure out if going to college was in my near future, almost anyone I talked to was the perfect candidate for conversation. When I don’t have enough material for the magazine, I talk about. When I’m deciding to sell my car and get a scooter—my entire family heard about it several times. (Mostly my mom.) When blog posting wasn’t working, I couldn’t post regularly, so I talked frequently about how often I planned to publish a post. When I cut a part of mom’s dress out wrong, it was a topic of conversation. 

While this sounds rather elementary and obvious, I did pull a thought from this pondering. If I find myself repeatedly bringing up a topic, not just in the early stages of a change but continually, perhaps it's not working. Perhaps it is too hard, quite big, or just scary. If I watch my conversations, perhaps I can notice when something isn’t going well before it becomes a large problem. Sometimes, like the college thing, I already knew it was a big deal to think about. Noticing allows me to give myself grace, only if I let myself have it. But my conversations allow me to see how much the problem is affecting me. With this observation, I can do something about it, rather than simply puzzle aloud. This is why communication, whether through talking or writing is so important: it is vital to understanding myself and my thoughts.