Week 47: Non-verbal communication week

I was not looking forward to this week, to be honest. The task for this week was for all communication to be... well, non-verbal. So I wouldn't be able to speak. Not fun. Well, I truly went all out this week and... spoke. A lot. Sorry, Benrik!

The thing was, I had no good days to do this. On Monday I went to the cinema with Amanda. On Tuesday I had to prepare a presentation, then went to Jay and Kate's. On Wednesday I went to Jamie's. On Thursday I had to do a presentation, then went to a party. On Friday, I had to do group work in class. On Saturday I had band practice and then went to see Nicole and Alex, then later saw Jay, Meech and Kate. And on Sunday I went to the cinema with those last three lovely people. Yes, I could have attempted to do this around my friends, but, quite frankly, didn't want to. I wanted to talk to them. So I did.

I actually attempted it on Wednesday, when I had a free day planned. Meg broke the news to me though that she was losing one of her jobs, and, as hard as I tried not to, I felt it would be more appropriate to speak. So I spent about fifteen minutes succesfully non-verbally communicating. I was also gonna try Friday, but I'd planned to see Rosie on the bus, and was too hungover to give a shit about the task. Still, I did ten minutes!

These ten minutes were when I spoke to Meg on the morning of Wednesday. Okay, so the attempt at non-verbal communication was fucked from the outset, seeing as Meg knocked on the bathroom door whilst I was taking a shower, demanding I hurry up and asking when I'd be ready. Well, I can't really non-verbally communicate if she can't see me, and I can't really text her if I'm in the shower. But then, I thought, in the Diary it says, and I quote, "Only speak if strictly necessary". So I guess this was sort of necessary.

After that, I went to see Meg, showing her the Diary so she could see why I wasn't speaking. She immediately broke the news of her losing her job, but I stayed silent, communicating (poorly) with hand gestures and the occasional written word. At one point she said that it was kind of hard to have a conversation with me while I was staying completely silent, so I decided to speak. I spoke about this for a bit, and after Meg left, I decided I would spend the rest of the day silent. But, lo and behold, I get a phone call. I picked it up and stayed initially silent to see if they'd still reply (is it possible to reply to something that's never been said?) But I felt bad, so I spoke. It was my friend Jamie, and he asked if I wanted to come over to his later. I said yes, and declared that my attempted non-verbal communication day was completely fucked. Oh well. I gave it a shot, which is more than I can say for a lot of the previous weeks.

The Diary handily had a page to write down things I found I couldn't communicate without words (pre-written examples on page: "Help, police!" and "I'd like to remortgage on the 7.9% rate APR") and things I found I could communicate without words (examples: "Nice weather we're having", "I fancy you", and "I want a divorce").

Things I found I could not communicate without words:
"What will become of Dawn's?"
Talking from the shower
Having an important conversation

Things I found I could communicate non-verbally:
"I had to talk to you while in the shower." (Took some effort to get across though.)
"I love you too." (This wasn't incestuous, it was in reply to something she saw on Facebook.)
"I will not do this all week. Just today."

That last one is what I said when talking about doing this task. Alas, I lied. I should have said "I will not do this all week. Just over the next ten minutes. Badly."