confidence

“raconteur
noun
ra·con·teur ˌra-ˌkän-ˈtər

:a person who excels in telling anecdotes
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary

deipnosophist

[ dahyp-nos-uh-fist ]

noun

a person who is an adept conversationalist at table

– Dictionary.com

Whenever I get asked why I got into music and writing young, my pat answer has always been “because pens and clarinets don’t stammer.”

Most of the people I call friends today who didn’t know me as a kid find it hard to believe I had a speech impediment. It’s taken me quite a long time to get some control over the how and why my tongue would tie itself up, and I still stammer when I get excited or upset.

“Stammer” isn’t quite accurate, though. I think it’s actually called a hesitancy, but everyone knows what a Stammer or Stutter sounds like. Hesitancy in speech is when your brain gives orders to say words faster than you physically can manage them, so you buffer with a lot of “Uhs” and “Ums.”

Why yes, this does like both a symptom and cause of Anxiety- as does my tendency to hate recordings of myself speaking where I’m not reading off a script. Coping mechanisms for a hesitancy include the tendency to mentally “rehearse” statements and deliberately speaking slowly with pauses between sentences, both of which increase the likelihood of being spoken over or interrupted.

Neither is great for ones self-confidence, especially in a Jewish household in New Jersey where conversation is more like a demolition derby than an exchange of information.

Here I am though, describing myself as an amateur storyteller, a deipnosophist and a raconteur– all of which are very fancy words for “chatty bitch.” I’m an introvert who frequently “runs out of people minutes” but who extols the Life-Changing Magic of Talking to Strangers.

Clearly there was a grand struggle, a great effort made to conquer my disability and emerge from my Bullied Child Cocoon as a Magnificently Eccentric Social Butterfly.

Nope. Nothing nearly so interesting as that. I just became really really good at telling stories. I don’t stammer when I’m reciting from a script- so I learned to treat telling stories as recitations.

“Confidence is what we call the equanimity we see in others.” The ability to look social anxiety and fear in the eye and say “Whatever, I’m not going to let you affect me.” Some liquid courage may or may not be involved in shaking off social inhibition, but when it comes to Talking To Strangers or being a raconteur, I don’t really have “tricks” or “hacks” for being a good conversationalist. At least, I don’t have any that aren’t covered in greater detail by others.

There was no “a-ha” moment of conquest over my anxiety and stammer. The only “trick” I can point to was literally just building that ~~confidence~~ equanimity for speaking to strangers… and that developed over time.

It’s psychological, and it won’t be shaken off overnight- or ever completely really- but the first step for me was finding opportunities to be brave and practice pushing the anxiety aside for a few minutes, an hour, the length of an evening.

I won’t lie to you, it’ll feel really weird. As a relatively tall, bearded, hairy dude, I was terrified of coming off as a creep. That’s where deciding to let equanimity rule will come in clutch, and the best feeling in the world will really just come from finding kind people.

The best way to find kind people? Start off with something kind. Even if it doesn’t turn into a stirring conversation, you will have made someone feel good. It can- and probably should– be something casual and surface-level. “Dude, love the suit.” “That’s a super cute outfit!” To this day, I sometimes worry that that’ll sound creepy, but truth be told? Most folks are just happy to be noticed kindly.

After that, for me, came something harder. The fact is people are really good at picking up on sham or fakeness. Any place you have to act fake to “fit in” isn’t somewhere you belong OR will enjoy being. Being told to “be yourself” is trite bullshit and too easy- you have to learn to be okay with being yourself. To quote Dr. Brene Brown, “We belong anywhere we show up as our authentic selves. Everywhere, and nowhere at all.”

That is a tall order… and having friends, loved ones, and the company of kind people make it easier. My friends don’t care if I stutter when I’m excited- they know I have something worthwhile to say. Enough kind people have responded well that, despite the anxiety, I know that I can be my chatty, eccentric, Anthony Bourdain/ Jimmy Buffett/ Bilbo Baggins mashed-together self.

That’s one thing I should mention, though- it probably is my single biggest “trick” to being a storyteller. Any storyteller, writer, artist, or creative of any type will likely tell you something similar, but here’s my version.

To have space made for you, make space for others. If you want to tell great stories, you have to listen to the stories of others.

That’s the biggest perk of talking to others- you don’t always talk. You listen, you learn, you absorb, and you connect.

At least until you run out of people minutes… then you get to hide out, recharge, and think of more brave ways to tell and hear new stories. Not a bad way to spend a night out in any case, right?

Stay Classy,

Good morning, friends and neighbors!

In the last few months, I’ve developed a new tradition. After my therapy appointments, I wander down the street to my old cafe. There, my friend Madeline is usually on the espresso machine. She makes me my favorite coffee drink (a cafe con miel, essentially a latte with honey and cinnamon syrup,) then I sit down to write… something.

Usually it’s the start of that weeks blog entry, as now, or continuing work on the next book. Recently I’ve also started posting more casual, narrative foodwriting through Medium.

Regardless, it’s a block of time each week that I have set aside to be creative. Routine and Practice are vital if you want to make anything worth making.

“What I’m gonna write about today” though… that’s always a bit dodgy. As you can see, sometimes I just start with “whatever is right in front of me.”