This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
I have a problem.
I tend to talk too much.
There are at least three reasons for this.
The first is an effort to control a conversation, or people’s perception of me. In therapy, they call this the wall of words. If I build it high and strong enough, it will protect me from anything I don’t want to hear or feel.
The second is a tendency to go too far upstream of the topic. For instance, in a conversation about how to make bread with a wild leavening, you don’t need to start with the Big Bang, or other theories of the original inception of the universe. You could fast forward all the way to creation of carbon in late stage main sequence stars.
The third is related to both the first and the second, and it is that I have a hard time ignoring the fact that there are always so many more things to say about any given topic. And there’s a big part of me that’s afraid if I don’t say it, you’ll assume I didn’t think of it, and anyway who am I to say it’s any less important than the six things I’ve already said?
Perhaps you can relate. If you’re a talker like me, I’m sure you can.
What I’ve been trying to intravenously administer to my soul (you better believe my soul has veins) is that the more you try to say everything, the less anyone will care about anything you have to say.
Which is one of the reasons I chose this format. It forces me to heed my own counsel:
Try to say something, don’t try to say everything.
Click at least one of these or else…
…you’ll be locked in a room with twenty eight word vomiters who all have a podcast they want to tell you about.
A cure for verbal diarrhea