Interested?

He is in the helping professions.  As a matter of fact, not only in the profession that he is in right now, but in some side hustles that he has previously had.

And we were talking about training, and education, and degrees that we have held.  Well, for the most part, of course, about how the training that *he* has had, and the degrees that *he* holds, and the fact that a not particularly distinguished degree, that he holds, allows him to do the job that he currently holds, because, even though the degree is not in the field that he should have had agreed to hold this particular position, the fact that it's a master's degree technically fulfills a checkbox, and that means that he gets to hold this particular job.

But, as I say, he is in a helping profession.  And this particular conversation, in a significant part, we were having because he thought that he was helping me.  Even though he wasn't really asking all that much about me and he was talking mostly about himself.

It would have been nice, and would have been helpful to me, if he had, in fact, asked about me.  Expressed some sort of interest in me.  Instead of just, whenever I mentioned anything, it reminded him of an experience that he had had, or a job that he had done, or various other aspects of his life and experience.

And the really funny thing was, that, at one point in the conversation, he started talking about how *interested* he was in other people.  And, specifically, how interested he was in people like me, as I've had a wide and varied background.  He is so terribly interested in people like me, who have had an awful lot of interesting experience.  It is so interesting to find out about people, like me, who have had all kinds of interesting experiences, in all kinds of interesting fields.  They have so many stories to tell.  *I* have so many stories to tell.  He was so very interested in people like me.

And he kept talking.  About himself.  About his background.  About his qualifications.  About his experiences.  About the jobs that he has had.  Throwing in very occasional questions about me.  And every time that I answered one of the questions, my answer prompted him to remember a number of his own experiences that he needed to tell me about.

He was, of course, completely oblivious to the contradiction here.  The fact that he was talking about how interested he was in other people.  The fact that he was interested in people, specifically, like me.  And the fact that he really wasn't asking all that many questions about me, and he couldn't wait to interrupt whatever I was saying with his own stories and experiences.

Nobody listens (2)

At one point here I included a post noting, in a joking way, that nobody actually listens to what I say.  I have, at times, wondered if I over-exaggerate some of these notes or comments.

Recently I had a couple of conversations that indicate that I do not exaggerate.

In the same day I had two conversations, both with people who know me reasonably well.  In the one case it was somebody with whom I have had extensive experience doing volunteer work together.  In the other it was with somebody I have known for a long time.

Both conversations turned to my recent health issues.  In both conversations, the other party asked for details of what had been going on, and I gave details of my experiences.  In both conversations, slightly later in the conversation, the other party raised the topic again, and, once again, ask all the same questions.  I gave all the same answers.  In neither case did the other party recognize either the fact that they were asking the same questions, or that we had previously covered the topic, or that I gave all the same answers, all over again.

I wasn't wrong.  Nobody listens.