You know what I find incredibly interesting that doing this whole business-y thing has taught me, maybe more than anything else?

The art of what Not to say.

I mean, what one says is important, of course. Being articulate, being able to communicate concepts to a range of personality types, adapt to various conversations, all of that is important.

But it's what one leaves out that makes all the difference in the world.

I don't mean simply keeping one's mouth shut, although lord knows that's a skill that not enough people have learned. I mean selectively choosing exactly what components to put forth and keep back.

The reason I am thinking of this at the moment arises from an email exchange that I have had with D1 after last night's un-fun time (see previous entry). He sent me an email after he got back. Nothing horrible or bitter or awful or anything...reasonably intelligent and unemotional, given the circumstances.

And I read it, and left it for a bit before responding, which I did at like 2am or somesuch. Which is another thing you learn. Not that I was mulling it over or anything like that -- I hadn't even really read it closely enough to mull. Just to let it sit. This is another thing too many people have not yet learned, and it is certainly something I fail at from time to time, especially when incensed.

But back to the point. While the email was fairly reasonable, he did go on at some length about their financial circumstances. And in various ways sort of implying that some of this is my responsibility. Including their credit card debt and their car payments.

So I wrote him back, at some length. And what I mean by leaving out -- I essentially did not respond to his specific financial statements. I mentioned that we're all broke, and I said in a very general fashion that I have faith that he and his wife are competent intelligent adults, without saying, exactly, what I meant, which was "Look, man, you're a grown-up now. In fact, you're several years older than me. It ain't my responsibility that you're broke, and I have no obligation to you or your wife to feed and clothe you."

And he responded today, in a much more positive -- at least to me -- way. He talked about how he and D2 have worked out something like a plan. And how they're going to sell one of the cars (duh), and get some things together. Whereas I believe that if I had either said what I meant or gone into a specific pityfest for his situation it would have been a far different email I opened up this morning.

Another case in point. Large Unnamed Client and their train wreck of a project. In the meeting with Semi-Big Cheese, Fairly Minor Cheese, and More Like Curdled Milk Than Any Cheese, (SBC, FMC, and MLCTAC from now on), I knew better than to say anything like "yes, I do believe that you could actually have something built by April", because that would have given FMC hives. Now, while FMC is lower on the totem pole than SBC, he is the one I must deal with much more frequently, and he's high enough on the totem pole to be in charge of the gang I now must go in and put the fear of god into.

It would give him hives because he's been trying to tell the business people (ie, Biggish Cheeses) that this project is stupid to try to do now because everyone's busy launching the redesign of their gigantic and highly popular site. Which is not an insane thing to say. However, the project I personally believe is way smaller than everybody seems to think it is, at least if some measure of control is exercised on it. And I know that a dev team could be made available.

Oh my. I'm getting very dull, aren't I.

I just realized that I'm managing to explain at length the thinking I have been doing around a specific project, which just can't be very interesting to anyone but myself. What this actually is is fallover because the Boy is also not overly interested in hearing about this stuff, preferring to tell me (in great and grave detail) about how he told one of our servers to stop accepting mail when the other one fails because our DBA forgot to reconfigure it after the other server came back up a long time ago.

Now if you think *I'm* boring, try listening to THAT kind of thing all the time.

I wrote a terrifically pompous email yesterday. I sent an email a bit out into the ether a while back (couple months) to the mother of my childhood best friend, who I had looked up on a whim. And the entity I sent it to (not finding any other email address) did, in fact, forward it to her, and she wrote me a nice little note.

So I wrote back and I think it was a very pompously worded thing. I knew that at the time. And looked at it and tried to figure out how to make it less so, and failed. It's because I honestly haven't spoken to this person since well before I hit puberty, let alone turned into something reasonably resembling an adult person. And she's a writer. And it's not that I need to impress her, more like...I don't know what tone to strike with her at this point. I had all kinds of questions about her and her kids, and the whole thing wound up looking like I was Miss Manners cum William Safire (HATE him) writing. Ick. Oh well, hope it's not too horrible a turnoff.

Crikey. I am a terribly boring person today.

I have to go work on a terribly boring thing, too. Proposally sort of stuff.

Hey, be grateful I haven't just cut and pasted my emails into this thing. That would have to be worse, right?

That's all for now. I've been racking my brains for something more entertaining, and it's not happening, so you'll have to live with this dull thing for the moment.

- onehanded