overlap

Further to the entry below, it's been mentioned that I have a habit of half-saying things, or making leading statements and not following up on them. Almost all of my blog entries have titles which are either lyrics or musical allusions, and lots of what I write (here and elsewhere) is littered with references of different levels of obscureness. I guess it's an intellectual game I like to play, for my own amusement entirely, but which should work at face value (that's not a deliberate Phil bloody Collins reference) too. I consider that if people really want to know, well, they have tongues in their heads. But now it's come up, I also realise that it shouldn't surprise me if people that haven't met me or don't feel they know me are less inclined to speak up. As far as I'm concerned there is no mark to overstep, especially where I've started the conversational ball rolling. If there's something to say, in the words of VotB, you just say it! This is a rather curious situation for me, now I start to think about it. I'm naturally a very private person, and I'm very experienced in giving the response to a question that will close down a conversation rather than the one that's actually true. It's part force of habit, part instinctive self-defensive measure to keep folk at a certain distance. Which is why on that one particular issue, my increasing levels of self-disclosure are doubly remarkable. What it boils down to is that my sparkly ladies (and other readers) give me a platform where an important part of who I am is given a far looser rein than I feel comfortable allowing it anywhere else. The people who I feel should know, know. But for what it's worth, my colleagues, even the ones I get on with, rarely know that I'm taking the afternoon off to drive halfway up the country to go and see some band they've never heard of either. Nor do they know how many bikes I have, nor what I did on my holidays - I do stuff because I want to do it, not because I want to talk about it. But being able to talk about make up or skirts or shoes or handbags on a roughly level playing field with those people with whom I'm talking about it is worth more to me than I can probably expect you to appreciate. After longer than I care to say where I've made every effort not to betray myself - and I don't like the feeling that who I am is some guilty secret when that's definitely not how I see it - I can't just lay it all out for all to see. I don't work like that, even if I am getting better at it within certain limits. If you find my levels of openness fluctuating, all this ought to give you some clues why that may be. Thanks for reading!