“A little less loquacious, please.” – Mrs. Orth, my 9th grade geometry teacher.

You’re not the first to enlighten me of penchant for verbosity.

There have always been people who have issue with this aspect of me. They always tell me about it; it hurts – my ego, but still it hurts. I don’t believe they mean to hurt me, but I keep hearing it and it gets old.

At its core, what chafes me is someone’s demand for me to act in a matter that prefers them (over myself) to my detriment. They expect I must change who I am for the sake of them. Why? Instead of accepting me as I am, they expect me to become who they want me to be. Not asking, but telling, expecting, demanding.

Uh.

No.

“Who are you to expect me to change like that… for YOU? Fuck off.”

You know what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve felt this way before. Welcome to being human.

I’ve come to 1. accept this criticism will come again, 2. see how I can grow from it.

A single-panel comic strip, “Mr. Boffo”. You see 2 felons in a jail cell, sitting on cots, speaking to each other. One says: “17 arrests, 17 convictions. Maybe it IS me!” 😂

I looked for merit in the criticism.

I’ve observed this sort of feedback typically results from people who primarily interact with me in conversational text mediums: email, txt msg, Slack, etc. 

Writing and speaking are different things. Our modern trouble the written word has become a prominent tool in how we communicate – and we try to speak through it, and that’s doomed to fail. Twitter? Conversational malnutrition leading to informational malnutrition. Blog post? Article? tl;dr. Reading and writing be hard. Reading and GOOD writing both take time.

Consider your daily time spent posting, commenting, txting, emailing. You’re having speaking conversations through the written word. Sometimes that’s a valid communication medium, sometimes not.

People accept greater volume of information in a speaking conversation than a read one. Which means… I suffer from verbosity when I conversationally write (most people are the opposite, #kthxbye).

Yes, you may well have to loosen your belt from the volume I provide, but I’d rather you be well-fed than malnourished.

I’ve been posting to Instagram. It has a limited but decent size for text posts. I took it as a challenge to improve the quality of my information conveyance within thus understanding from my writing, while reducing length. I’m working on making less more; it’s been a fascinating endeavor.

Opinions I’m long-winded will remain (itself a conversational-speaking allusion). No matter how much I reduce volume, there will always be someone who says it’s still too much (just can’t get this post fully within IG’s limits). 7.5 billion people in the world: I can’t satisfy everyone.

You likely cannot see my improvement. Film left on the cutting room floor. Know every word I type has been considered for the role. I’m not just trying to choose my words carefully, but craft them together to more deeply, with nuance, convey the information and the sentiment I’m attempting to communicate.

My endeavor to be eloquent continues.