while you were talking ....

Okay, the blog has tremendously enjoyed its break. It perfectly used its more than 50 days vacation to refresh and rejuvenate itself and learn and imbibe techniques and procedures for using and incorporating more and excess words and adjectives in its sentences and statements than necessary or required. Anyhow, the blog is now back to its dreary life of just acting as a medium for the rambling of its purposeless author. To be able to reminiscing about its amazing trips during the vacation (saturn, europa, charon, halley et al.), it is handing back the control to Mythalez.

So, did you zone out while reading that excruciating paragraph above? I would have. I remember that until recently, I used to be a very keen listener when carrying out one-to-one or group conversations, face-to-face or via phone (ofcourse, I have always drifted off and slept in any kind of talks/seminars/classes irrespective of how interesting it might be :D, and continue to do so). I listened so well that not only did I comprehend well about what was said, I would also notice the various grammatical/factual errors and forcefully stop myself from interrupting and pointing them out.

But lately, over the past year, I find that I seem to frequently zone out or drift away into my own thoughts while carrying out a conversation with someone. However, the saving grace is that my face and gestures do not betray this at all. Coming back into such conversations, I realise that I had been pretending to listen- nodding at the appropriate times, speaking the appropriate words, even occasionally asking an appropriate question, while absolutely not remembering what was said. And find the speaker continuing on his discourse oblivious to the mental absence of his/her audience. It is as if an automated responder takes over me leaving my mind free to wander. However, some drawbacks of this zoning out phenomenon are that I wouldn't have much of an idea about what was said, (who knows it might have even been interesting or useful) and I appear to be a poor conversationalist (obviously, the 'hmm's and yeahs don't make the best responses all the time.)

*tap tap, shake, wake up* Okay reader, the post is ending now, you can come back from your wandering thoughts to post your customary comment employing your automatic response system. :P

And yeah, the above described habit of mine is limited to voice conversations only, I still chat with all my vigour :P