I’ve recently noticed during in-person conversations with other people the need for facts to be validated by something other than other people in the group. When I say a fact I have to resist the urge to find if what I’m saying is still valid or not from Wikipedia, a search, or whatever other place I use for that type of information. What I’ve realized is that other people do this too and sometimes cannot resist the temptation and they’ll take out their phones and do a ‘quick’ search for “Is the Blue Men group coming to Chicago?”. This then results in the need to continue pausing our conversation, adding the upcoming tour dates into their calendar, and messaging their friends to see if they’re available a Saturday 4 months from now. When they do get back to the conversation we could have shifted what we were talking about, or if it’s just us two then I’m sitting there wishing I could be doing something else while this disruption occurs.

I’ve been experimenting with reading a physical newspaper recently. After I’m done reading the paper I’ll recycle it in order to prevent extra clutter in my space. While talking to a friend I had been explaining something I learned from the paper and caught myself saying, “I wish I still had the paper to show you” and he responded “Ironic”. This had felt very similar to the first example in the sense that I was thinking, “I better not loose the source of this information, or else someone might think I’m a liar!“

Why must I feel the need to have a direct source for all of my information? Maybe it’s because I was using the showing as a crutch to avoid telling the not-so-fun parts of the story. Maybe it’s the pain of actually not having a good story. Maybe it’s because I was called a liar when I was actually telling the truth in the past.