By Timothy Hammond
When I was younger, I was not afraid to talk to people. I have never been a social butterfly but I was friendly to people. When I worked for Albertsons in the early 2000s., one customer called me the problem solver because she said every time she had problem, I would fix it for her. She would always ask for me if she had any issues in the store. I was friendly with coworkers and would hang out with co workers after work. I was also friendly in online games I played such as World of Warcraft and The Sims Online. Then in 2005, I started working at a national cable company in technical support. I worked in residential and later, commercial technical support for ten years, listening to customers complain about their service not working and trying to help them troubleshoot their service. While some customers were willing to work with me as we tried to resolve their service problems, others were not so willing to work with me. I believe that as time went by and I listened to complaints on a daily basis, they stuck out to me and I started to dislike being around people in general.
Currently I do not have any friends and most of my time is spent at home watching TV and reading self help books when I am not traveling for work. I also still play online games such as Final Fantasy Online and World of Warcraft but I do not seek out people and friendships in those games like I use to. I do not know how much of an effect listening to customer complaints daily had on my ability to connect with people, I just know that I would rather not be around people. Perhaps I have anxiety around people, I do not know. I am not saying though that everything was all bad working at the cable company. There were some humorous calls that I took such as the woman that called in to order an adult pay per view and told me to hurry it up because her husband was ready to get it on. But I know that it is human nature to focus more on the negative than the positive and I think perhaps I heard negativity so much in the technical support position that it affected my communication abilities and social life.
I am hoping this blog will help me not only learn to write and communicate better but to also overcome my anxiety or whatever it is of communicating with others and socializing. I am also hoping that the blog will teach more of how to do websites and blogging among other things. I also sincerely want to help others and hope that by sharing my own stories and thoughts as well as other stories that I come across, I can help others see things from different perspectives that will help them in their own lives. I eventually want to do a podcast as well and learn how to talk better instead of my currently dry monotone voice but I’m taking learning one step at a time and this blog is first.