Do you ever have those times when you reach your point of tolerance? I’m not talking about alcohol consumption or reaching the limits of your pant’s button on Thanksgiving. I’m referring to more unique yet annoying issues. Something encountered that is irksome or hurtful but you just let it go because you can deal with it. At the start you might not even notice it, but eventually when you do, you look back and realize that it was happening all along. Well, I think after years of dealing with it, I’ve reached the camel that broke the dead horse’s back. Wait… I’ve been beaten by a dead horse? The camel broke my bendy straw? Something like that.

In the past two weeks, I have finally started making mental tick marks of how many times this frustrating thing happens to me. I now have enough hatch marks in my head to create a couple of Mondrian paintings. What have I been counting? I’ve been tallying the number of times that I’m interrupted while speaking and also completely talked over altogether. It doesn’t matter with whom I’m speaking- customers on the phone, co-workers, managers, family, or friends – I constantly get cut off. I used to just stop as soon as the other person started interrupting, but I eventually tried to keep talking. Well… It didn’t matter. My words, thoughts, and answers to questions were drowned in words that were evidently more important than mine. An occasional interruption between people who are talking is natural. Sometimes a person gets excited and feels the need to interject; that’s fine, but it happens to me with almost every sentence!

So why? Why does this keep happening? I think I have important things to say. Wait… Now I’m lacking confidence because of this. I know I have important things to say! I have even been known to be funny sometimes, but my jokes are often wasted. Jokes just aren’t funny when I have to repeat them three or four times before I even get a chance say the punchline. Maybe I’m not loud enough. Maybe I don’t have a commanding presence. Maybe I sound like a babbling idiot. Maybe, unbeknownst to me, I’m incredibly intelligent, and I’m speaking in Latin, but to me it just sounds like English. Maybe just maybe, I use the word maybe too much. Maybe that’s it!

No matter the reason, not being able to finish a spoken thought is really getting on my nerves. Imagine you’ve been craving your favorite food all day (cake in my case), and you finally have it in front of you. Every time you go to take a bite, the phone rings. No, forget the ringing phone. Imagine someone just slaps the food right off your fork and onto the floor – bite after bite – and all you get is a crumb here and there. One day of that would suck, but you could handle it. If that happened for months though, wouldn’t you want to scream? Well, it’s been too long for me, and I want my damn cake!

I guess that is one of the beautiful things about writing. No one can write over me. So, my loving and loyal readers, you will have to continue to suffer through my rants and stories because this is the only place I can finish a complete thought. See, I just did. Wow! That was awesome. Mmmm… Cake!
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What frustrates you on a daily basis, and what do you do about it?