I’ve not been writing anything lately. Life has got hold of me and right now there is a lot going on in my life. I’ve got someone sharing my house, which is a new experience for me. I’m doing the advanced photoshop course. I’m going to be doing a Self Defence for Women course starting this Friday. And I started my own miniature group – a group of miniaturists who get together every fortnight to make little things. This group has taken up much more of my time than I expected. I thought other people would help me organise the projects. What’s happened is that only one other person is game to give it a go, so between us, we have the brunt of making something, getting all the bits and pieces needed for the project, learning how to make it ourselves and then teaching the others. As a result, I’ve not been writing as much as usual. I appreciate everyone who has been visiting and leaving their comments. I’ve not forgotten y’all.

 Anyway, I was looking through my unpublished blog writings. I’ve got heaps of them and came across this one. I did an article on it at the time, about the first impression “How not to give a talk”. This was the second one I wrote and never published. So here it is !!

 Tuesday, 27 February 2007

 I went to a talk last night. I came out with a couple of impressions. One was how not to give a talk, and the other one was about pretension.

 In the past, I would have attended this talk, not understood anything, and come out feeling as if there was something wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to find him interesting and thoughtful. Me, I had no idea what he was talking about. Everyone was nodding wisely. Me, I was wondering what was so wise about what he was saying. Maybe they were just being polite. I didn’t talk to many people afterwards to find out what they thought. The person I went with, agreed with me. This speaker had said lots of words, but there was no structure to what he was saying. So in this instance, I had the feedback from my friend.

 I can remember being in situations like this in the past and thinking there was something wrong with me. I didn’t understand a word of what people were saying. I would come out of the play, talk, movie, whatever, and feel less than. Stupid.  I talked to people who say “I NEVER watch commercial television. I only watch the ABC and SBS”, and I would feel less than for enjoying my commercial television, and my weekly crime show. I remember someone, somewhere saying “I’ve never read a novel in my life” as I waded my way through as many as I could, loving every minute of the imagination and the escapism. People would say: “Novels are escapism”, “Commercial movies are just escapist trash”, and I loved them. I would go to movies that were supposed to be”high brow” and feel less than and stupid because I didn’t understand a word of what was going on.

 Over the years I have realised that often when people go to these events, these “high brow” shows, they often don’t really understand what is going on either. But…. They would never say so for fear of feeling less than or stupid.

 Now, I come out feeling different. This is not my “thing”. I like events that say something clearly. I don’t work well with inuendo and I believe that these sorts of situations are often ego boosters for people who need to feel important in some way. They can then look down on people like me, who don’t understand, and feel as if they are more intelligent and therefore in some way better than me. They aren’t. It’s okay for me to enjoy my novels, my escapism and my commercial television. I use tv and reading for relaxation. If I want to learn something, I will read about it, or research it. My likes as far as movies, radio, television, books, talks etc is really fine. I am a very intelligent woman. I know that.

 The other night, I’m afraid I found myself in a group of what I consider pretentious people. People who go to plays that say nothing, but are very “meaningful”. Individually they are all probably very nice people. But as a group, I find them quite pretentious.

 Madeleine

Saturday, 29 April 2006