Question Number Four

When it's all said and done, will you have said more than you've done.

Oh, at least as I see it, I have definitely done far more than I have said at this point in my life and I assume that trend will continue. I've told a lot of stories about the things I have done in my life, but I would guess I have probably covered 1/10th of them in all the years I've been writing and talking. Often times I simply don't share things for a variety of reasons, so I don't talk about them.

For your amusement here is a summary of list of why I don't talk about things.

First, my formative work experiences were as a cop - during that time frame I learned to simply not talk about my life at work, it wasn't relevant for the most part and you really didn't want to share with your fellow cops the really stupid, amusing, illegal or unethical things you were doing. I also did not share all of the things I did at work in my personal life because they were either irrelevant (how many drunk wrestling stories do people want to hear?), confidential (as in ongoing criminal investigations or prosecutions), and horrific (the gruesome and heartbreaking details of some of things I saw and did).

From there, my formative work experiences have always involved a great deal of confidentiality, either in the terms of cleared work (I'm sorry, I could tell you about that but then I would have to kill you), or personnel confidentiality (no, I really should not tell you about the worker I fired because they were wandering around the office drunk and naked over the weekend), or business confidential.

Outside of the work, I grew up in a big family in a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business and it always kind of irritated me, so I learned to just simply not participate.

Then, there is a huge amount of power and wisdom available in a simple act - when you are in a crowd, listen, listen, listen, and keep listening. People tell the most astounding stories - if you are just paying attention. So, when I am in social groups I tend to just listen - a lot.

So, when it comes to the end of the line, I suspect I will have continued to do far more than I have ever said even with blogging and participating in online social media and being a pretty voracious e-mail author.