Rusty Schtick

I've lost my schtick. Or it's grown rusty with disuse. Something like that.

By which I mean that the snappy bitesize description of what I do / who I am has become less snappy, more wordy, harder to spit out and to digest.

At parties, people ask me what I do, and I sort of go "uhhhh" or babble away or dodge the question. At a recent gathering of academics, the queries were more focused, and the inarticulacy was correspondingly worse.

Plus there's the past tense / present tense issue. My old soundbites were descriptions of then-current activities, but now they'd be describing stuff I'm no longer involved in, or not really interested in anymore. The current soundbite is, on the other hand, raw and unfinished and productive of hesitant possibilities; it is not a crisp declaration of what is, as a good short summation of self should be.

Perhaps I should practice making a "do tell" face in the mirror; that way, I can get other people going about their interests and work, while my schtick rusts in peace.

Comments

[Jill Smith]

Oh, man - I feel for you. I covered something similar with one of my first blog posts...

[Linkmeister]

Go all metaphysical. "I am but an observer of mankind's folly."

No? Okay then. ;)

[Jill Smith]

Oh, I like that.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

FWIW, I have a snappy little soundbite about what I'm doing, but I've been saying the same thing for so damn long that it feels really old and lame by now, and it's really really hard to muster the energy to say it. Bleah. Maybe academics just need better social skills, to be able to talk about something besides work.

[Rana]

Linkmeister - I liiiike it! (And if I intoned it in just the right way, it might scare some of the more persistent questioners off...)

Jill - I remember that post. The concept of negative space is apt. These days it so often feels like the least interesting aspect of me is the stuff that can be soundbited (soundbit?).

Which sounds a bit like what you're going through, NK - I've had that experience at conferences and big family things - by the time you've said the same little niblet about ten times, you begin to wish you had a card that said all the info that you could just hand out.

Given my reluctance to deal with the "where are you from" question, for similar reasons, maybe my problem isn't with my schtick. Maybe it's with people's desire for soundbites!

[Linkmeister]

It's licensed under full Creative Commons usage, so feel free to steal it. ;)