A Day Of Near-Silence

To speed up those who haven't heard yet (which would be basically no one), I have spoken roughly 280 words today, not counting time spent in class or words exchanged for education motives. But even considering that, because this is the busiest day of the week for me there was quite a lot of time spent forcing myself to be quiet. Why did I go through this, and what did I mean to prove? Well, it was partially because I'm starting to get the feeling that I talk a little bit too much, and that it starts to get annoying if I use repetitive phrases all the time over and over again. It wasn't that big of a deal even, but I got thinking about how to remedy the situation. That's when I came across the thought of being quiet for a full day. It was a very interesting idea to test out (see? Testing? It's Science!). I wanted to see if I had the self-control to stop myself from talking needlessly. It was a way to kind of mix up the day. I could have just went through the day normally, and it probably would have ended up being amazing anyway. Or, I could make everything different, for me at least.

Now looking back at it, I can say that some things succeeded and others didn't. Although I was able to avoid using tons of overused expressions repeatedly like I usually do, I ended up talking in fractured sentences quite a bit. Another purpose of the experiment was to see how it affected the conversation among my friends. Usually, I end up in almost every conversation, and I give my two cents on any subject that I have any sort of knowledge. I was curious to see if I was stifling other people So would my friends end up talking a whole lot more without me talking instead? From what I could see, not having my voice kind of restricted the total conversation. This was not quite as much because my friends don't know how to have lively conversations without me (quite the opposite, in fact). Instead, it The point from the beginning was to not talk too much. But it began to shift to use as little words as possible. This challenge was different from my original intent, but it ended up working alright.

The whole incident was actually quite nice. Every time I considered say something, saying anything, I had to make sure that not only was the sentence necessary, but that it was efficient, using as few words as possible. In this effect it succeeded completely: I began to develop the habit of thinking before talking. What are the chances that I will continue to do this in future days? Very unlikely. But hey, it was nice while it lasted.