Impaired, Inarticulate, and Incoherent

Everyone is good at something, but no one is good at everything.

I'm a heavy supporter of that phrase. I remember when I'd play video games as a kid, and even nowadays, one of my favorite things was when you had the ability to create your own character, with a certain skill-set, and they'd have their strengths and weaknesses. You only had so many "points" with which to make your character good, so you put them into different categories, strength, agility, intelligence, charisma, which affected which aspects of the game you exceled at. I wish it was that easy in real life to see what you're good at and what you're not good at.

Lately I've been examining my own skill-set, and trying to focus on what it is I'm not so good at, and what I could get better at. I came to the conclusion that I'm not such a good conversationalist, I tend to think a lot before I say anything, so I naturally usually don't say much. It got me to thinking, what exactly sets a good talker apart from a not-so-good talker?

One of the disconcerting ideas I came upon is that people really don't have that much relevant things to talk about. Most of what we say to each other is filler, and really doesn't have any meaning in advancing a relationship. Sure if you have common interests, common classes, it helps, but to stick two people together that don't really have much in common makes it difficult for them to hold intelligent conversation.

I used to think that the only thing that set a good conversationist apart from a bad one was that a good one would make sure that there was always words flowing easily between two people. I realize that there are a lot more subtleties and delicate nuances to a good conversationist, knowing what to say, when to say it, when not to say it, how to say it, what tone, what order, how to start a conversation, and end a conversation, in addition to the huge variance of things I'm missing.

It's frustrating to know that there are so many ways in which you can improve, in such a small facet of life, and I think it relates to the saying that the more you learn, the less you realize you know. I'm certainly wishing I could have a +5 charisma right now, maybe I wouldn't be so tongue-tied talking to people then.