It’s not you, it’s me.
It’s not that I think you are boring, or that I don’t value what you are saying.
Unless you are boring and talking AT me about something in which I’ve explicitly said I have no interest, of course. In that case, jog on pal!
Ever experienced that? Isn’t it just THE BEST thing EVER when you tell someone you aren’t interested in, for example, the exact process of milk pasteurisation only for them to spend the next 20 minutes telling you exactly how it works in precise and excruciatingly minute detail.
Don’t get me wrong, in the right time and place, I love conversations with interesting and engaging people. I’m always happy to learn something new if it’s something that I have an interest in, no matter how slight that interest may be. People who are passionate about a topic are always great to talk to, animated and upbeat, you can see it in their eyes when they switch to something they care about and it makes the resulting conversation far far richer.
People who know every fact and detail, purely to know every fact and detail it would seem, do not stimulate me, if you don’t have passion for something why should I care about it?
Mind you some of my take on these things is because of my own approach to such things, I’ve always struggled with detail preferring a higher level view of something as long as it’s delivered with energy and enthusiasm. I prefer to take things like that and learn more about them in my own way so I can put my own take on it. This is partly down to my upbringing, partly down to my personality and whilst I’m aware and accepting of this, I fear that outwardly I can be guilty of projecting, how can I put it, a less than welcoming demeanour.
In other words, a lot of the people I work with think I’m grumpy ALL THE TIME.
That said, I’m very goal oriented and I know I subconsciously apply that in many places where I shouldn’t. For example, if I’m standing in a queue, my ‘goal’ is to get to the front as soon as possible. Everyone in front of me in the queue is, therefore, under scrutiny to minimise their time as much as possible (they clearly don’t know this because few of them seem to try very hard!).
I’ve learned to live with this and temper it as best I can but it gets worse and more obvious if I’m stressed or tired, to the point I can be downright rude, horribly unthinking, and selfish. I do not like that state of being.
But, as I said, it’s not you. It’s me. This is my shit to deal with. And I am.