Thank god for the Internet.
This is something which has embarrassed me all my life, and made me suspect I'm neurologically miswired (perhaps Tourettes?). But according to this discussion on wonderful Ask Metafilter , it turns out that a great many people do the same thing...and feel the same way about it. Surprisingly, most people do it in strikingly similar fashion. They even blurt out the same exact random phrases!
Further googling reveals more and more and more overgrown discussions where multitudes confess they do the same. Perhaps everyone does?
I'd assumed this was anxiety-related behavior, but after a decade of very rigorous meditation, that could hardly be a factor...yet the behavior remains. Perhaps it's a side-effect of a particularly vivid imagination. Another downside, like depression, for those gifted/cursed with creativity.
I had a law school prof who called me "The Blurter."
ReplyDeleteAnd all along I thought that there was something wrong with me. What an overwhelming relief to know I'm not alone. Seriously, Jim, thank you for posting this!
ReplyDeleteThe response in all of those discussions I linked to is just ridiculous. Ask metafilter threads never go on that long. It really looks like a sizable percentage of the population – perhaps even a majority – does this. And, per my comment on imagination, I suspect that the only reason the rest of the population doesn't is because they lack ability to really immerse into memory.
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