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Yesterday I found a new park, the Palisades-Kepler State Park. I found it to be quite beautiful, with little creeks, hills, many trees and ferns as well as surrounding a part of the Cedar River. Thirty to fifty foot tall cliffs show how deep the river has been, and shorter ones provide great places for spiders and harvestmen to hide. But of course these also are great for climbing.

I went alone namely just to explore and check it out, so I didn't go climbing, but I did do some thinking (nothing really unusual there). A friend and I were discussing personality flaws a few days prior, and the one that she had pinned for me was that I don't generally say what's on my mind. According to her, it seems as though I would like to say something, but don't.

I think she is correct. I often have difficulties conveying my thoughts, stories, and emotions to others, and I think part - if not most - of that is due to the fear of miscommunication: if my word choice and emphasis isn't perfect, then I fear that my message will not be conveyed as effectively as it could be if I just charge ahead. This fear causes me to analyze my sentences and words thoroughly before saying them. This in turn leads me to not say what is on my mind at that moment because often what those thoughts or emotions are may not be appropriate for the specific social situation; at least I believe they are inappropriate, the reality may be different but I only have my perception.

To solve this, I believe that I will need to work on telling more people about my life in person as well as gaining knowledge depth in a specific area, namely my passion (preferably optics), so that when having a conversation, I can feel confident and can therefore speak freely without worrying that the other party will not understand. From there I can work on more ambiguous topics that normally would require more analysis, but with theoretically more confidence under my belt I won't hae difficulties with them.

Hand in hand with the timidness, I personally find myself to appear apathetic in many cases. This may be because I don't spend time worrying about petty things (in my definition that would be things that can be addressed in 10 minutes or less). However, this apathy can cause issues with others who adopt the same attitude, so I need to make sure that when dealing with those types that I can switch into a motivated and desicive mode to avoid conflicts. It will be important to give them one chance, "I don't know, what do you think?" if they do not offer a constructive response, then I can make the decision. I generally have no actual opinion on the matter, so such decisions are easy to make.