Quotable Me: Point Zero

I have noticed  something recently - it's just a subtlety. You would probably dismiss it and you probably should. I wouldn't give you any argument.

I should give you a bit of background.. I'm considered to be a "professional person" but nobody really cares about that. 

I care. 

But in all honesty pretty much nobody else does.

I work in a profession, one that has been largely usurped by people who don't work in the "profession". That's fine. It's the way it is. I don't lose sleep about it.

The strange thing is that people do have an interest in my profession - it covers 50% of the TV schedules - it's just that they don't care about the professional aspect of it. 

They don't know or understand or bleed what it takes. I don't expect them to.

I don't lose sleep about it.

As for the "person" bit, well... it's unprofessional for professionals to care that someone cares who they are. As Mr Mitchell, my old school French teacher, used to say when he was teaching us to correctly spell the French word for teacher.. singularly Foolish, doubly Stupid..

Suffice to say that I don't come home to a hallway full of flowers.

This reality is more a result of the profession than of me. And the system in the country I have spent my life in. Which I wouldn't change.

I actually do think what I do has value. But I have never been able to prove it...by even the lowest levels of proof acceptable to any independent observer. 

And so... it doesn't. It doesn't have value. 

The free market system, the outsourcing companies, the Zeitgeist.. everything.... means it doesn't.

Don't get me wrong. That doesn't excessively trouble me. 

I simply observe that it is true and I make an adjustment in my next sidestep.

I factor it in to future decisions and directions.

I regret my worthlessness, but I strive for better.

And still I wouldn't change anything that brought me here.

But I've noticed something recently...just say in the past few months... let's call it, oh, I don't know....2016.

The people I noticed this from are, I suppose, the sort of people you might term 'semi-close' relationships. 

Not close, because most of those have long dismissed me.

Not far away, because all of those have long dismissed me.

But semi-close, some getting closer, some staying, some coming by.

And what I've noticed is this.

I'm. Getting. Quoted.

I say this with some self-cynicism (there must be a word for that) because I have ironically long included a section on this decaying blog called Quotable Me.

What happens is this. I notice my own words coming back at me -  my own words being repeated within my own earshot.

One a few days ago was an improvised suggestion I made around six weeks ago, (also in the earshot of somebody else who recognised its source).

It's fascinating hearing a story for the first time that you know the words to.

Ownership of words is a strange thing. It only takes three or four words for my brain to know the end to the sentence it is responsible for inventing. 

In this case I could have punched the date and punched the time of when those words were said in that order, likely for the first time in human history.

It's actually a nice thing. I don't copyright my thoughts. I offer them freely. And for free. I just prefer not to be knifed for them.  (It's a preference, not a rule) 

So I appreciate that six weeks ago something hit home, got remembered, and I was around when it got repeated. 

It's... funny ....and make no mistake... funny is always good.... Remind your sad acquaintances of that if they ever try to score points against you're funny. And don't spend time in their company again.

But this is not the point I'm making.

In, say, the last three months, I have had somebody look me in the eye and tell me, perhaps a total of ten times, "It's like [you] say". 'you' means 'my name, usually abbreviated' 

And then they quote me.

Now that is an extraordinary thing. It's never happened before.

It's..interesting. 

Nothing more. I'm not used to any deference. I am trained in being a punchbag.

But when something undervalued, becomes valued, in some dark corner of a semi-strangers mind, then that is something, isn't it?

Something that is not nothing.

Perhaps ...even something special.