Why people get on our nerves

I meant to write a longer post now but instead I've been doing some blog maintenance, adding some other pages that I read and putting in a couple more networking gadgets to help my legion of avid followers keep track.

Just one quick thought - nothing particularly to do with music but a general social observation. Why is it that some people get on our nerves? I've been idly wondering about this in the context of one or two people I find a bit annoying and I'm pretty sure what it is is that when I talk to them I constantly feel like they demand a particular reaction from me. Either they tell jokes I don't think are that funny and I feel I have to laugh, or they tell me they like something they think I also like with such exaggerated enthusiasm that I feel I have to agree, or they try to engage me in heated conversation about a topic I don't really care about... It's so tiring, and boring, to have to manufacture reactions. People who don't require you to do that are so much more pleasant to talk to.

Related point inspired by another recent encounter: it takes an especially social comfortable person to feel comfortable talking to a socially ill-at-ease person. When people seem very withdrawn and don't want to make small talk the temptation many of us feel is to try to draw them out, engage them... and pretty quickly one is doing exactly what I've described above as annoying behaviour. Why can't we leave them alone? Perhaps because all but the most exceptionally graceful people are discomfited by the way socially awkward behaviour in others draws their attention to their own social dis-ease.

Why this will never become a proper blog

It's not a great start, is it - from a first post on the 8th August to a second on the 11th September. It's not that I haven't had things in that time I wanted to blog about. I've thought almost every day of something I'd like to share with cyberspace (is 'sharing' still the right word if nobody reads it?) but finding the time to sit down and write about it... that's another thing entirely. I've actually started carrying a notebook around and making entries in it when things occur to me, a sort of journal of things that occur to me. The idea was supposed to be I would jot something down when I'm sitting on the underground and have some world-rocking realisation, then come home and transfer it on to the blog. Except it doesn't quite work, because while I have a 15-minute commute 4 times a day, which is just perfect for scribbling an idea down, that only works because it's dead time I can't use for anything else. Actually devoting time to blogging that I could use for other stuff - I'm not sure if that will ever happen. Which makes me, basically, not very well adapted for having a blog. So there probably isn't going to be much to see here. I still hope I might get it together to share some of the observations burning a hole in my notepad. But right now I'm going to bed.