Dixie

A long time ago I read a book called The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. It was an interesting read about the development of the English language.

But at one point, he mentions the Dixie accent in Utah. And he says nobody knows why it is called that. And that causes me to wonder how extensively he researched. Because I would think that if he actually talked to a few people who spoke with that accent, he would be able to learn about Utah's Dixie region. And I would have thought that if he planned to talk about the characteristics of a particular accent, he would want to hear it spoken.

But maybe that's just me.

Labels

I decided to label my posts in case somebody wants to follow my thoughts on some particular topic or something like that. Yeah, my reasons aren't exactly well-defined at the moment. But, anyway, if you see some sort of topic or theme that I haven't labeled and you think I should, or something isn't given a label you think it needs or is labeled in a way that doesn't fit or you think of a cooler name for one of my labels, feel free to tell me.

A Sad Non-Cycle

I feel like I've been posting a lot of stuff about me, which is not necessarily what I want this blog to be about. I want to examine various subjects, not spend all my time focusing on me. But this is the first thing that I've had any desire to write about for a while.

I've noticed that I draw a lot of my energy and excitement from the people I am with. I am a people person. Yes, I am shy, but I am a people person all the same. I need a lot of human contact. And I have apparently been this way for my whole life- I seem to remember hearing that as soon as I was mobile, I would go to where the people were. And if you put me in a group of people, I rarely get very tired before everybody else has left.

That's all well and good. But I seem to need to feed off of other people's excitement to express any myself. If I walk into a room super excited about something and start to talk about it, I sometimes sound slightly bored about it, even though I'm not. It isn't until someone shows some interest that I really get into the telling of it. And if I try to put some excitement into my voice, it is forced and it sounds that way.

This can be a problem, considering that other people tend to like to listen better and get more involved when the speaker is excited. And since I start off sounding bored, I can't always get someone else to feed my energy so I can show my excitement. So we are both disappointed in the conversation. Which is a rather sad non-cycle to get into.