The evening of June 8, I tweeted/wall posted the following:
@kellythul I plan to be pleasant and supportive in person and in social media tomorrow. Just to confuse people.
This resulted in some interesting observations during the longest June 9th of my life (that STILL isn't over as I write this). These observations included:
- I like to pick on people - I really do. I started to twitch when a nemesis posted the morning downpour made her look like a "wet dog", and all I could say was "Sorry to hear!". I had several more interesting thoughts I could have offered related to the "wet dog" that was served to me on a silver doggie bowl.
- People expect me to be unpleasant - Greeting people with a simple "Hello" or "Nice to see you" left both of us standing there confused... waiting for the next comment to undo the initial pleasantries. The number of "OK, now you are starting to creep me out" also grew as I remained true to only uttering pleasant/supportive comments throughout the day.
- People like to pick on me - Easy target to be sure. I am shoe lace challenged, unfettered by focus, and just a tad goofy. But it is less fun to point that out if I just reply nicely.
- The further away you are from me, the more you like me (keeping in mind everything is relative) - In aggregate, my Facebook connections are more local, while my Twitter gang is far more distributed. Barely a ripple occurred in Twitter when I posted my ill-advised "niceness day" plan, but Facebook lit up with a VERY heavy skepticism that I could pull it off.
So, all in all, it was an interesting experiment I have little desire to repeat again any time soon.
So, I'll hang on until midnight tonight with the whole "nice" thing, but look forward to a June 10th dedicated to catching up with a few people.
