10. Even a small mistake can cause you to doubt your overall abilities and knowledge 

I’m so used to mistakes and embarrassment at this point that I’ve learned to just laugh it off.  

Starting in 2000, I was regularly up in front of our church leading worship. Once when I was playing guitar, the worship leader asked me to start of the song. I launched off into the electric guitar intro, but then I heard him say: Dave, that’s great, but it’s not the song. Everyone laughed and I was like, oh yeah. What was the song again? And once I figured out what I was supposed to be playing, I restarted and off we went.  

I’ve literally forgotten how a song is supposed to go and had to tell the congregation: hold on, I can’t remember how the song goes… and then ask someone in the band.  

I’ve also been up in front of the congregation, or in smaller classes, as the teacher, and had embarrassing moments too. I think the worst, and this was before I was used to it, was in college English 102 and I had to give a speech on a hot topic. I chose gun control- pro. I looked up all my statistics and presented my case. We were supposed to take some questions at the end and the teacher asks- Dave, what about the second amendment constitutional protection? To my embarrassment, I had never even thought about that. So I just stood there with a blank look on my face until the teacher had enough of the awkward silence and let me go.   

Just the other day at work I was looking for the sugar in the break room and asked our receptionist about it as she was passing by. My wife said, Dave, it’s right there in front of you. At which point I noticed that it was indeed, right in front of me. I just turned to the receptionist and made a face that said, I’m an idiot, don’t mind me. She smiled and walked off. 

At this point I just acknowledge the screw-up, have a laugh at myself and move on.  

Practice makes perfect, amirite? 

I feel like the key is humility. I know I have a fair amount of pride, and it’s something I need to work on. So anything that knocks me down a bit, I tend to accept that it’s probably something I needed anyway. 

I do have something of a natural tendency to accept that I might be wrong. I try my best to learn things, but I’m also aware that I can still only ever grasp a small part of the larger picture. So when people challenge me on things I believe, my first instinct is to wonder if I got something wrong.  

Maybe that means that overall, it doesn’t take much to doubt by overall abilities and knowledge, because I’m never all that certain about my abilities and knowledge in the first place. 

11. You feel comfortable just walking up to someone you find interesting and striking up a conversation 

I feel like I’ve already answered this, but looking for the variation, this would be with someone “I find interesting” rather than just whoever happens to be there. I’m wondering then if this is driven towards a potential mate, then? In my context, would I walk up to a woman I might be interested in and start a conversation? 

I mean, I have certainly done that in the past. And I do introduce myself to people even now. But I don’t do so with any intent to try and impress them as a potential partner since, you know, I’m already married.  

True story: I was working back in the mid-90’s in construction, and I was talking to a co-worker and telling him that I never really had too much trouble talking to women or finding girls I was interested in. And, as God is my witness, just at that moment the owner of the house, a single woman, came out and asked me if I was single. I told her no, I was already married. And she looked disappointed and told me that she had a bunch of single friends that she thought I might be interested in. I thanked her but told her I was unavailable. She goes back inside and the guy turns to me and says: Wow. I guess you weren’t kidding. I was like, well what can I say? Never happened again, but yeah, that actually happened to me. 

With regards to talking to potential mates, while I was separated and then divorced back in the early 90’s, I did actually approach several women, so, no, I don’t have too much problem striking up conversations with people I find interesting. But also, I’ve also struck out a few times too. Those stories aren’t as interesting though so, you know, I’m not gonna share them.  

You know those prize giveaways where you can win a chance to spend time with some celebrity. I can’t think of any celebrity that I’d actually want to spend time with. I have athletes that I think are fantastic, but that doesn’t mean I’d have anything in particular I’d want to say to them. There are actors or actresses that I really like watching, but again, that doesn’t mean I’d want to hang out with them. I would say they are interesting, and they of course do things that are interesting to me, so should I want to strike up a conversation with them and get to know them more? Maybe I should be thinking of it that way. What would I ask them? I suppose I’d just start with the kinds of questions I’d ask anybody else. 

Maybe part of the problem I’m having with trying to make conversation with a celebrity is one half- don’t be the person who just wants to hang in the orbit of celebrity, that’s lame. But the other half is imagining that because they are famous, I should already know the basics about their life and work, and given that, asking them the kind of basic questions about themselves that I would anyone else would seem stupid. I mean I wouldn’t walk up to Bradley Cooper and say: Hi I’m Dave, what’s your name? Cool, so what kind of work do you do? Etc. It would already be assumed you’d know those things. So what exactly would I use for conversation starters? I dunno. So between the reluctance to foist myself on them just because they are famous, and then the lack of conversation starters that I would normally use, it just seems like it would be awkward.  

Celebrities aside, yeah I feel comfortable striking up conversations with people I don’t know.  

12. You are not too interested in discussing various interpretations and analysis of creative works 

Oh yes, I am.  

I like reading the intros to the classics. I’ll discuss those things with people who are interested in them. I like listening to book reviews and will gladly listen to them even while I’m reading the book so that I can become aware of themes I might not recognize on my own. That’s why I’m usually glad to read a good intro. There I’ll be introduced to the major themes of the book, with references to how those themes are explored. I love that since I’ll pick up on some themes, but maybe miss others. 

With art, I’m interested, but I’m also skeptical of how much BS there is in the art world. My impression of so much of the analysis is that it’s either made up, or made up. Even when it’s not, I tend to think a lot of the attempts at assigning meaning to the piece are garbage anyway. I know there is a belief out there right now that art is supposed to say something: speak truth to power or whatever. I don’t buy that. I think art is essentially just decorative. That may not sound as important as speaking truth to power, but sorry, our job as artists is to make things look better. Now if you happen to speak an important message at the same time, great. But I think too many artists get pretentious about what they’re role in society is. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is importance in making the world more beautiful. There’s nothing second-rate about that. But when you start to think you’re the catalyst for important change, I have my doubts. 

I always ask people if they can ever give me an example of learning anything from a piece of art? I haven’t. Most people can’t think of anything. I have learned from creative works of music or literature, because they are communicating ideas in a more direct sense. Poetry, I’m less interested in, but then again, it has more power to communicate truths than visual arts.  

However, I have found a few people who have given me examples of having learned things from visual art pieces, so I’m at least open to the discussion. I probably just come at it with a lot more opinion already formed than I would approach most subjects. 

Music on the other hand is an incredible example of creativity that can teach. The combination of words and music has an ability like nothing else in this world, to take an idea, and make you “feel” it at a deep level that it is beyond just words. This can be used for good and evil… because you can be made to genuinely feel something that isn’t true too.  

I’m not sure what to think about the whole post-modernist sense of a work having no intrinsic communicative value; the value is solely what the listener/reader/viewer assigns to it. 

I can certainly find some truth in that, but I’m loath to cut the author out of the conversation, since he authored it for a reason. I understand that part of the beauty of a creative work is that it can be viewed in a way beyond what the original author ever saw. There is something amazing about the power of a work; that it can have further reach than originally anticipated. That would be an example of value being derived by the receiver beyond what was ever meant to communicate.  

At any rate, I’m open to discussions of it, so no, I am not someone who is uninterested in these questions.