How Embarrassing!

Lately I've been thinking a bunch about embarrassment. In particular, my reactions to it.

I go out of my way - a lot - to avoid embarrassing situations. This includes seeing other people in embarrassing situations (the root of sitcom TV humor; I hate most sitcoms), and putting myself in such situations.

And it's more subtle than you might think: I'm starting to wonder if a lot of my reticent tendencies are due to this inclination. Not feeling comfortable speaking up on a subject if I don't feel like I've more-or-less mastered it.

I've noticed that in meetings at work (and I first noticed this during customer meetings back at Epic) I tend to let other people drive the meeting, and then I'll chime in later when I've figured out that there are certain issues which haven't been addressed. It's hard for me to drive a meeting if I don't feel like I have a firm grasp of all the subjects at hand. And it's hard for me to put forth ideas without spending a fair amount of time turning them over on my own to decide if they stand up to my own criticism.

Needless to say I'm not comfortable speaking in public. I learned in graduate school when I was an instructor that I felt far more comfortable teaching if I felt like I had all the issues for a day's lessons arranged and understood in my own head before I went out to present them. Not that I was bad at answering unexpected questions, but I felt uncomfortable when I wasn't fully prepared. (I remember one student comment to the effect that even though I wasn't a rousing speaker, my mastery of the material helped them learn the subjects.)

I tend to be more outgoing on-line, particularly in e-mail, probably because I can retreat away from e-mail if the worst (or something like it) happens. It's easier to take risks (speak more flamboyantly, contact people I don't know) there.

I'm not quite sure where this all came from. My recollection is that I was not particularly reticent when I was a child - at least, not early in elementary school. I think I was actually quite outgoing and vocal on pretty much anything which caught my attention. Even as late as 6th and 7th grade I often played the role of the class clown, doing silly things (such as telling bad puns - as opposed to the good puns I tell now) to get attention. But by high school I think I became quite studious and inwardly-directed, and certainly by college my present attitudes were pretty firmly established.

I do have a number of recollections, though, of events when I was a kid or teenager and where I got myself into some embarrassing situation and deeply regretted it (either because I realized what a bad spot I'd gotten into, or because it was something I got punished for), and I wonder whether these events ended up curbing what was otherwise a natural exuberance. If, so to speak, I got trained not to put myself out on a limb because of some memorable events when the limb got sawed off.

(Even today I will sometimes brood for days over making some dumb statement and resolve never to do that again.)

It's also been pointed out to me at work that my reticence makes it hard for the good work I do to be noticed by people (at least, people who aren't working directly with me regularly, or aren't looking for it). I've never been very inclined to, as my Mom put it, "toot my own horn". But as she also says, if you're not going to speak up for yourself, no one else is going to do it for you. (Not strictly true, but not bad advice.)

It's possible this might come as a surprise to those of you who have, oh, debated subjects like baseball or comic books or science fiction with me. But then, I know those subjects in great depth, and I'm also quite aware of where my knowledge of them is deficient, and I can happily and quickly bow out of discussions which wander into those areas.

This is one of those elements of my character which I'd really like to change or overcome, but which is such a fundamental part of my character that it's very difficult to see how to proceed, except in little steps. It's not the sort of thing which can be overcome by artificial trickery (like forcing myself to do a bunch of public speaking), because I'm clever enough to figure out how to work my way through the situation in a way that best placates my fear of embarrassment.

It's just something that's been on my mind a lot recently.

This entry has been brought to you courtesy of that feeling I get - it seems - every year around this time of "things not really going right". I've often thought that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder since I always get pretty down in the fall: It gets dark earlier, things are dying, etc. Moving to California from Wisconsin hasn't really helped this. Mostly I just get moody and a bit withdrawn.

I've definitely had that "something bad is going to happen" feeling for some days now, and for no particular reason. Maybe it's the baseball playoffs. Or perhaps a little stress over Debbi's kittens, since they're going to impact me, too. But mostly I suspect it's just the season.

On the bright side, I'm finding that this time of year reminds me of when I bought my house, and that's a good thing.

Also, I always seem to recover by Christmas time, so I guess it's not true SAD.