In Which Your Obedient Serpent consults the Hive Mind.

[athelind]

Upon awakening this morning, Your Obedient Serpent had one of those epiphanies that keep expanding his mind these days.

For the last couple of days at work, I've been in and out of training. Training at my new job leans toward the casual and conversational. They take it seriously, but they want to know that you're engaged.

I've found that, when discussions of safety, odd technology, and strange experiences lean toward the conversational .... I frequently have A Relevant Amusing Anecdote.

And they all start differently.

When I was in the Coast Guard ...

When I worked in the hospital ...

When I was at Cal State, doing Seafloor Mapping ...

When I was in the comic book store ...

When you're clinically depressed, one of the things that gets into your head is the idea that "I haven't done anything with my life." And that's a hard one to dislodge.

But ... by GAD, sir! I've done all manner of things with my life.

I am ... INTERESTING.

You may have noticed that, over the last year or so, a phrase I've used more than once is 'I don't want to be That Guy. "Nobody wants to be That Guy."

Well, I think that I might be This Guy:

... and I think I'm good with that.

---

Pity poor kohai_tiger, who, in the course of two to three hours of daily commute, occasionally gets stuck in the role of Hapless Gentleman's Club Member Buttonholed by Pompous Windbag McBragg ...

---

Comments

[lyttlebyrd.livejournal.com]

From what I've read here, and heard of you from Lauran and Jenn, you sound like a very interesting person. I am looking forward to meeting you IRL at their wedding!

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Are you inferring you've reached your Anecdotage?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I've always thought you were interesting. Sometimes in the sense of the Chinese curse, maybe, but always interesting. };D

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

You get the double bonus and a Big Daddy escort for the Commander McBragg reference. ^.^

Put another few decades on you, get you a Meerschaum, and you too can tell tall scaly tales. ^.^

[mocha-mephooki.livejournal.com]

Quite!

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

*gives you an Underdog stick-on pin*

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I have had much the same experience returning to university 20 years after most people start it. Go Go Old Farts Brigade, what-what?

[zeeth_kyrah]

Why, I remember McBragg; in point of fact, I saw him almost every day when I was a child. He'd tell the most fascinating stories, but while his wits were astounding, it was the wit of his friends which made the gathering laugh. He primed the piston and they sparked the gas.

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

Yep. His sorts were the very epitome of the Shaggy Dog story -- with his friends providing the Stealth Pun punchline. :>

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

Dear Sir,
Yes indeed you are at very minimum INTERESTING! (It's why I like the conversations you and your friends have here.) You are also very well educated, intelligent, and have a pithy humor (in and among your other styles of humor, I suspect.) If the Icon of Dragon is correct you are also swift to anger but happily slow to act upon it (though once critical mass is attained, boy howdy, look out!)

As to not wanting to be "that guy" well, i dont know enough about it, except that the image is of an elderly man, who smokes, whose body is in need of tai chi or other physical exertion, and judging on appearance might have some money. Whether that dude is a kind patriarch or an asshole, I have no idea, but the notion occurs that if I live long enough I may start to resemble outwardly That Guy, so will pray for that guy as well.

As to the Company's Need To Know whether one is engaged or not, or what one's handwriting looks like (Europe) or one's fat to muscle ratio (some U.S. companies) or one's footprint (I made that one up, and dear lord let me know if that one's true), to quote one of online friends "I'll stop calling it Orwellian when it stops looking like "1984"."

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The gentleman pictured is Commander McBragg; if you click the picture, it will take you to the Wikipedia page that describes him and the cheaply-made but mildly-witty cartoons that featured him in the 1960s.

As for "being engaged", I meant that in the sense of "actively participating in the assimilation of information that they readily acknowledge is dry and tedious". When I say that our training tends toward the conversational, I mean that we do it in small groups (three or four people), and our trainer (whose colorful career includes being a lighting technician for a movie studio) has a touch of the McBragg himself, frequently segueing into his OWN anecdotes, generally involving the inappropriate application of high voltage.

It's quite entertaining, really; I do have to avoid the temptation to let things devolve into Dueling Anecdotes, though.

I may have to hit Happy Hour with our trainer at some point, just so we CAN have an evening of Dueling Anecdotes.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

I had quite forgotten Commander McBragg whom I now vaguely recall from childhood hours of watching television.

LOL, re: my quite over the top erroneous understanding of the company's "need to know" of one's engagement (vis-a-vis a personal romantic relationship) rather than engagement in one's education. I am happy the training course educator is able to make a dry, tedious topic sufficiently interesting to be learned.

Re: Dueling Anecdotes, sounds like great fun! Friends and I once upon a time used to "bludgeon one another with our rapier-like wits" as Shannon put it. Happy times!

Many thanks for your detailed reply! :D

[wingywoof.livejournal.com]

Yay! It sucks that I know what you mean about feeling useless while depressed, but I also know what it means to get over that feeling. I'm glad you had a eureka moment. :)

I'm not as think as you drunk I am

[athelind.livejournal.com]

At this stage, I can look back at the way my mind was working while I was clinically depressed and view it ... well. CLINICALLY. By and large, I have a difficult time grokking what was going through my mind at the time. I clearly remember thinking these things, and I can even identify the stimuli that triggered the cognitive loops.

It's all internally self-consistent, but when you're IN the loops, it's hard to see OUTSIDE them, even though you're aware that other people AREN'T operating by these axioms. When you're OUTSIDE the loop, it's hard to see back IN ... and, honestly, I'm hesitant to make an effort to TRY, because depression isnot so much a feedback loop as an EVENT HORIZON.

... this is what I'm like with a beer and no food in me. FEAR.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

It's a happenstance or quirk of life. You listen to people talk about their problems, their experiences, their questions, and you try to review it in terms of your own life. You'll notice a ton of my replies to your various journals start with my own experiences and how I can or can't relate. As you grow older, it tends to happen more often, since you've seen more! Sometimes, this can grow aggravating, especially if you're hearing this from one person all the time, or if they're trying to use said anecdotes smugly or some such. There's nothing really wrong with being That Guy, though. :)