Obviously I'm not vain enough

I'm going to pretend that hundreds of people, all my imaginary blog followers, have been extremely disappointed to find that I have not posted anything since last April. I'm sure you'll get over the devastation someday.

I haven't been doing any experiments lately, no staring at myself in the mirror for an hour without looking away, no hair removal, no experiments with mirrors. It seems that I may have forgotten about my vanity. So now it's time to come back face to face with it. I suppose that's the only way to do it.

While I haven't been reflecting on my reflection much lately, I have been recording my own voice from time to time. I just listened to a long message I left for my significant other the other day, and I was appalled at how slowly I speak. Even when I try to speak quickly, it somehow comes out more slowly than how I heard it in my head. And this is actually affecting the way I communicate. I'm making the effort to speed up a little bit. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, my rate of speech is reflective of my rate of thought. I ponder things, and sometimes I ponder them aloud, while I am talking to people. When I have recorded myself doing this, I get really bored listening to myself. It's only appropriate to think that maybe other people think the same thing. I suppose some of my students feel the same way about being in my classes.

However, I think most people listen to me when I talk, and I can judge by their reactions that they are also engaged in the conversation. They laugh when I think they'll laugh, they groan at a bad joke when I think they might groan at a bad joke; all in all, things seem to be ok until I listen to my recorded voice. I wonder if we're so used to hearing recorded voices coming at the speed of light (listen to radio ads, talk radio, MTV, the news) that hearing "non-professional" speakers just seems really slow. I've decided, though, that speaking slowly isn't really a problem, as long as I say interesting things.