If Everyone Talks, Who Listens?

I always get called out for being the quiet one in the group. No problems with a one to one, and if you let me, I can go on for hours. You can put me on stage or in front of a camera, and you wouldn't guess I am an introvert. I hide it well.

But in a smaller, more intimate group that has enough extroverts, all clamoring to be heard, I listen. I laugh on cue. I "ooooh" and "aaaaaah" appropriately. And I smile when they whip out a camera to take a picture. Don't ask for a crazy pose now... I only have one kind.

When I was assigned by a producer to go to London to interview the Backstreet Boys, the team that was sent with me couldn't understand why. I was too quiet on the journey there to be a decent enough host. But when I held the Mic and heard "Roll Camera" and saw the finger countdown, I turned on the "host mode" which surprised them.

Of course, they told me what they thought and how they felt without mincing their words on the way back. Trust Asians to be blunt enough so you don't have to read between the lines that "you are boring" without the camera in your face.

I am a lot better now of course, and will make conversation, quip a word here, roll out a sentence there but nowhere near some of my friends who just let it all out without a care in the world. I envy them sometimes.

Was I always like this? Not the first 7 years of my life. Being the first born, and a child my parents were proud off, I had quite a sharp tongue with an inflated ego to boot.

But that little girl had to adjust and tone down to survive when she went to stay with her grandmother and aunties. The teen years didn't help either. Being awkward and unsure, I chose to hide behind my more extrovert friends.

I did such a great job of blending into the woodwork and hiding behind my friend. Yes! I really had only one friend in class, the others were her friends and so mine only by default, that at a recent School Reunion, only two remembered me, the others were absolutely blank and couldn't jog their memory.

That carried through into my adult life. Ironically, many things I chose to do, put me in the limelight. From TV to dancing to radio but I did it because I enjoyed it. Never really cared for the glamour or the exposure to people. Which is why I loved radio. I could sit in my little room, talk to a wall, and play music and then get paid for it.

Sometimes I dreaded picking up the studio telephone... I had to make conversation with a listener. Ahhhhhh... help....

Somehow, all my friends are socialites, comfortable in groups, one of the loudest, and command attention. Do they gravitate towards me, or I to them? Who knows, but it works out well.

Just quickly, I want to say, thanks to Steem, I am slowly getting out of my shell. A lot more comfortable around people. Even just last year, there was no way I'd have gone to SteemFest. It would have been too stressful. Probably, one of the reasons why this place will always be special to me.

Now coming clean, this is one of the reasons why I am hardly on Discord. To me, that's the intimate group, and you have all these people having so much to say, laughing, joking like old friends. My "introvert" kicks in big time. I think one discord I am ok with at the moment is @SteemitMamas but it did take me some time to warm up and I still have my hang-ups.

So all of this is to let you know, that I do come around and lurk on Discord. I try and catch up on the conversations (by reading them) and laugh at the jokes even if you can't hear me and if I can help in some way, I most definitely will.

You see, I am more the listener with all my talking done in my quiet DJ room on my blogs and vlogs. So thank you for reading, I truly do appreciate you listening.

Cheers,
Sh33la
08Oct19

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