When I notice that an action I’m planning to take seems likely to lead to an awkward conversation (big grocery hauls in early/mid pandemic were such an action, but so are smaller things like dressing unconventionally), figuring out how to navigate conversations about it becomes the topic-of-interest that my brain dumps its idle cycles into until I cease anticipating awkardness. I start with the whole truth, which would sound bad and not fit into a polite reply anyway, and examine what kind of reaction I’d expect to get for each possible truth-based reply I could give to an awkward question. I’m aware of when this kind of rumination happens but I actually enjoy it, because it transforms a feeling of nervousness about uncertainty into a feeling of confidence from better planning. I find that when I feel confident and well-planned, I tend to recover better when the actual conversation goes off-script, compared to how I handle the same surprises when I don’t take the time to prepare.
This pre-planning caches truth-based replies which seem beneficial. My favorite types of reply are the ones that encourage the listener to do something that I think would be good for them. For instance, when I was shopping for 2 households of elderly neighbors as well as myself, and I would happily volunteer that information because it seemed likely to influence others into shopping for their own elders rather than sending high-risk people to the store. That part of the reply also seemed to steer the conversation toward positive things we can do to have a bit more control over how things play out in our local areas, which feels far more useful to discuss than pure doom and gloom.
However, pre-planning also filled out my “don’t say these things” cache, which helped me avoid truth-based replies which seemed detrimental to discuss. I was trying to get one household up to 6 months worth of non-perishables by putting a bit extra into each week’s shopping, and I did not volunteer that detail, because if it was interpreted to mean “you should go buy 6 months of food right now” the resulting behaviors would worsen the rolling food shortages and result in a lot of waste if people bought things they didn’t need.
I guess I could name that pre-planning “about to break an Overton window”, but throughout the process, it’s only the other person’s window that I feel like I’m breaking. I can’t think of any time when I’ve voluntarily broken my own Overton window—I handle desires to do things outside my existing window by exposing myself to additional information which broadens the window, rather than just by disregarding it entirely.
When I notice that an action I’m planning to take seems likely to lead to an awkward conversation (big grocery hauls in early/mid pandemic were such an action, but so are smaller things like dressing unconventionally), figuring out how to navigate conversations about it becomes the topic-of-interest that my brain dumps its idle cycles into until I cease anticipating awkardness. I start with the whole truth, which would sound bad and not fit into a polite reply anyway, and examine what kind of reaction I’d expect to get for each possible truth-based reply I could give to an awkward question. I’m aware of when this kind of rumination happens but I actually enjoy it, because it transforms a feeling of nervousness about uncertainty into a feeling of confidence from better planning. I find that when I feel confident and well-planned, I tend to recover better when the actual conversation goes off-script, compared to how I handle the same surprises when I don’t take the time to prepare.
This pre-planning caches truth-based replies which seem beneficial. My favorite types of reply are the ones that encourage the listener to do something that I think would be good for them. For instance, when I was shopping for 2 households of elderly neighbors as well as myself, and I would happily volunteer that information because it seemed likely to influence others into shopping for their own elders rather than sending high-risk people to the store. That part of the reply also seemed to steer the conversation toward positive things we can do to have a bit more control over how things play out in our local areas, which feels far more useful to discuss than pure doom and gloom.
However, pre-planning also filled out my “don’t say these things” cache, which helped me avoid truth-based replies which seemed detrimental to discuss. I was trying to get one household up to 6 months worth of non-perishables by putting a bit extra into each week’s shopping, and I did not volunteer that detail, because if it was interpreted to mean “you should go buy 6 months of food right now” the resulting behaviors would worsen the rolling food shortages and result in a lot of waste if people bought things they didn’t need.
I guess I could name that pre-planning “about to break an Overton window”, but throughout the process, it’s only the other person’s window that I feel like I’m breaking. I can’t think of any time when I’ve voluntarily broken my own Overton window—I handle desires to do things outside my existing window by exposing myself to additional information which broadens the window, rather than just by disregarding it entirely.