Get to the Point

I have a problem. Sometimes I like to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. Somebody asks me a question and I just talk. I answer the question, but I give a lot of extraneous details that half the time are not that important. Now, as a Technical Writer that is a bad thing to have happen in my work. But, I think, perhaps, because I am a Technical Writer, it is part of the reason that it happens.

I have to be so concise in what I say in a manual for work that sometimes when people ask me a question I feel the need to expound upon a point. I have a lot of great ideas to share with the world, and I think it is an inherent need of mine to elaborate on those ideas for the first person to start up a conversation with me. The other contributing factor could be the fact that I am in a house with three women. It is hard to get a word in sometimes. I love the women in my life; but geeze maweeze, sometimes I just want to be heard.

Alas, I cannot blame my children, my wife, or my profession for my verbosity. If I blamed them for my faults, why, I would be no better than the growing contingent of folks in America that do not accept responsibility for their own actions. My family and job are not the reasons that I ramble. I ramble on, because, as I said, I like share my ideas. It is just that sometimes I have to remember that the other person(s) in the conversation may not be as into what I am saying. As soon as I forget that, I lose them.

It is at those times, and probably most times, that I need to get to the point. The person who compliments my shirt does not need to know the exact circumstances under which said shirt was purchased. It is okay to just say thank you and move on in the conversation. It is more than okay to get to the point.