Things don't always come out right

Communication in and of itself is simple. Think thought, open mouth or prep fingers, output message. Interpretation of communication, though, is the complicated part. Hone ears or focus eyes, listen to or read message, interpret message, solidify understanding. It seems I'm always screwing up with the first part that ends up screwing up the second part. :-S

I find it very intriguing to reflect on how people react to my communication. There are two sides of me I'll share in this post: Formal and Informal.

The formal part of me is dry and concise. Straight to the point. No dilly-dallying around. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency! This side of me comes out when I haven't established a personal relationship with someone, it is a work related situation, or I'm irritated by something. Outside of the irritated situations, many times, people find my formal communication too direct, stand-offish, intimidating, unemotional... rude even! That's not the intent at all. I can be straight forward and to the point given a situation.

For example - if I know the person I'm communicating with has a million things going on, I am sensitive to that and I keep my messages simple and sweet. Fact based and on subject. That way, I'm doing a few things: 1) ensuring my message is clear so it doesn't get jumbled up in their other thoughts, 2) treating others as I'd like done to me, 3) respecting people's time. There are plenty of people that appreciate this. Then you have others who need the more "personal touch". When you don't give this, you become a bad, bad person that is hard to talk to and get to know.

The informal part of me is very alive, playful, and energetic. Expressive. Vivid. Animated. There are a couple dimensions of informal in the World of Bui. When I know you, but don't know you know you, my informal communication is reserved. (Actually, that's kind of a scary thought. :-) ha!) I tend to get wordy and expressive to let you get an understanding of who I am. I also test waters, too, to see where the line is with you. Sometimes this totally blows up in my face.

Just the other day, I was talking to an intriguing individual. I'd really like to get to know this person better, simply because of common interests and thoughts. What a neat person! I would love to be friends with this person. But alas, I opened my big mouth, make a joking comment about how my change should be delivered, and the initial reaction I saw was 'Whoa... awkward! Awkward!'. It's kind of funny now that I'm writing about it, but I'll tell you - at that time, I felt like a total ass. Hopefully that doesn't inhibit a new friendship, but you never know. Fingers crossed it doesn't end up that way.

The other dimension is the very informal. I guess I'm a straight up whack. Things fall out of my mouth that sometimes surprise even me. I've been accused of being crazy and I'm OK with that. When we've established a non-judgemental relationship and there is mutual trust and love, there are no boundaries in communication. This is my inner circle. The number of people in my true inner circle can be counted on one hand.

I don't think these levels of communication are abnormal. We all have the same concept. The interesting thing is how we interpret each other. When we have our own ideals of what something should be, we socialize that in our heads and want everyone to conform to our logical buckets and way of dispersing it. The dispersion is what causes things to not always come out right.