My ears, and head, hurt

I listen to people. People know I listen to them. Now this is all fine and good.. usually. There are times, however, when this makes events more complicated than they have to be. For instance, when someone comes up to me with a standard “Hey, how was your day?”, I cannot answer immediately with a standard canned “Decent enough”. I have to look at their eyes and body language and what not and attempt to figure out what it is they’re really trying to say.

a. I am genuinely interested in how your day went. (Seldom the case)
b. I am acknowledging your presence, and this seems like as good a way to do it as any other. (Most probably the case)
c. My day was great, and I am dying to tell someone about it.
d. My day was horrid, and I need you (or any one else) to listen to me.
e. Some other weird special case that’s hard to figure.

It’s obvious it’s mostly one of b-e, and that this isn’t about my day at all. It doesn’t have to be like this, but this isn’t the root cause of my issues. All I’m saying is I should be able to get away with something generic like a “Great. How about you?” and be able to walk off without waiting for an answer. But no, magically the world knows I cannot do this and will stop everything for them. So I have to (within the allowable 3 millisecond response time period), classify their words under a-e, and come up with a suitable tone that matches up with what they’re going to say next. Anything from non chalant, to excited for them, to sympathetic and helpful. It is so complicated.

Either I’ve been talking to a lot more people recently, or I have this huge sign on my head that makes everybody “just know” this, but this is getting to be too frequently recurring an event for comfort. I don’t know what it is. Older people, younger people, PEOPLE I DON’T REALLY KNOW seem to take comfort in the fact that relatively idle ears exist. I don’t particularly mind this, but sometimes it is a bit extreme and I begin to wonder why the hell is it that I’m still there.

I would have been quite fine with it if it stopped there. But no. In a fit of delusional warpedness, people also magically assume I am a lot wiser and possess keener foresight than I actually do. It will thus start of as a general whine, and then I will get asked for input on the most obscure life decisions, behave as a moral compass, you know, general things I do not know and have no basis for making an informed judgement on, but will have to come up with one anyway. What is this about? Is this some weird “We asked wahgnube, he says this. It will work, but more importantly (I think), if it doesn’t, he said so. It’s his fault.” thing I do not get?

Stop. You have a brain. It’s your life. Live it. Screw it up. Just be you. I can listen. Sometimes it even irritates to listen. But I can and will.

I definitely cannot make your decisions.

I’ve been sort of neglecting the web log for the past few days. I don’t know what it is. It’s not that I’ve been that busy. I guess I’ve had my fair share of humour, creativity, general release and whininess, and whatever else I use this medium for, expressed in other forms. I’ve been feeling rather spent, and can’t really put down something I don’t feel like deleting. Like today’s. Arggh.

*One hand holds the other from backspacing while hitting the submit post button.*