Every once in a while, we baby boomers,\u00a0 slip up when we’re speaking.Well, at least I do! Sometimes we say the most ridiculous things at the most inappropriate times. I did that in a meeting at work the other day.\u00a0 I innocently shared conversation with the group while we were waiting for technical details about the meeting to be put into place.\u00a0 I shared my thoughts because, to me, it was a silly harmless story;\u00a0 a time filler.\u00a0 But, I immediately knew it was not a good time for it based on few sets of eye rolls I saw on the faces of colleagues. \u00a0I was unnerved about their eye rolls for, maybe, two days.\u00a0 Not shaken, not consumed, just a tad unnerved.\u00a0 It felt a little upsetting to me that I put myself in a position to be judged in what I perceived as a negative way.<\/p>\n
As I pondered this thing that was bugging me, I realized that I do worry about what others think of me at times like that, because I just don\u2019t want to be known as \u201cthat person\u201d who says the most ridiculous or unrelated things in meetings!\u00a0 Many people might debate my perception, and respond, \u201cBig deal,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s on them,\u201d or \u201cWhat other\u2019s think doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m on board with those ideas, but, there are times when I believe it\u2019s important to be noticed on the positive side of the opinions of others.\u00a0 My place of employment is one of them.\u00a0\u00a0 My little five sentence story was really nothing in the big picture;\u00a0 I\u2019m certain that it was mindless enough that it isn’t being\u00a0 held against me.<\/p>\n
Chances are pretty good that as of this writing, the majority of the crowd has forgotten about my little nonsense story.\u00a0 Some probably forgot about it several minutes into the meeting.\u00a0 \u00a0My words were not offensive; they were not about anyone else, and the topic wasn\u2019t anything that could hurt anyone or anything.\u00a0 It was just an inappropriate time to talk about this silliness that blurted out of my mouth.\u00a0 I guess I felt comfortable enough to \u201cblurt\u201d in that group.<\/p>\n
In the days since that blurting event occurred, I decided that the world has real problems, and me saying a harmless, silly thing at an inappropriate time isn\u2019t one of them.\u00a0 I reminded myself that everything on my mind might not be of interest to those around me \u2013 something I really have always known.\u00a0 But, given that this blurting event occurred, evidently,\u00a0 I have to remind myself to respect that others might not want to hear from me.<\/p>\n
This many years on the other side of 50, hovering 60, might be a good time to give myself a break and not worry about what others think. Maybe I shall say whatever I want to say, and not worry about it. Then again, maybe I should just do a bit more smiling and nodding.\u00a0 And as for the eye rollers \u2013 I hope, for their sake, that they can work on adjusting their thoughts too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every once in a while, we baby boomers,\u00a0 slip up when we’re speaking.Well, at least I do! Sometimes we say the most ridiculous things at the most inappropriate times. I did that in a meeting at work the other day.\u00a0 I innocently shared conversation with the group while we were waiting for technical details about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","tag-be-kind-to-yourself"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perspectives2ponder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}