No doubt, my post yesterday made Amy feel a bit uncomfortable. At a minimum it must have taken her off guard. However, she responded with class and was a great sport about it. Which brings me to today's topic: Assuming the Best.
With any text based communication like email and blogs, tone and intonation are implied with punctuation and grammar and, unless you're a really good writer, there is almost always room for misinterpretation.
For example: back when I was single and dating, I broke off a budding relationship only to change my mind a couple days later. So I sent the girl an email to test the waters to see if too much damage had already been done to get back together. Her response was cordial, even nice, but at that end of her note she wrote: "Goodbye." Then she signed her name. The period threw me off. Surely she was telling me something. Being a pesimist I assumed that she was trying to imply that she wasn't interested in seeing me any more (hence the period). Respecting her wish I abruptly stopped calling her and emailing her.
Two months later (that's like a two years in BYU time) I got an email from her saying, "I haven't heard from you in a while. Are you ok?" Turns out "Goodbye." was just a friendly goodbye, nothing more. I assumed the worst and was totally wrong.
Lessons like that have taught me that, in any form of communication, it is best to assume the best case scenario. And most of the time you'll be right. Back to Amy's comment. I assume that her comment was just a playful jab and a sincere question about the nature of my blog post. Nothing more. She's a very nice person and why would I have assumed anything else? I didn't. My post yesterday was simply a playful entry, an unsolicited "roast" of sorts. Hope that's how it came across.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Assuming the Best
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5 comments:
You dated someone before me?
Tyler, I read your post yesterday to my husband and he about died laughing. Then he said "he's right, you've got nerve." Then I read him the Nit Picker post, and he said "wow, what a sweet post for his wife." Turns out that is what I SHOULD have commented. Whoops. Just so you know, I did think that. Don't know why I didn't write it.
Funny. I don't think you should have said anything different. I wouldn't have had anything fun to write about the last few days if you had.
. . . and all this time I've been thinking this blog was about me . . .
These last few posts are deep. I need to think more about why I blog. I also need to assume the best when dealing with written communication... good advice.. thank you.
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