I worked up to it. The first time I went to the market to practice, I felt scared as shit. When I recorded the busy market walk later, I wanted to show the little things I had learned inside what used to feel like one huge, intimidating world.
It was Small Business Saturday, right after Thanksgiving. The place had food, art, jewelry, people walking around and a magician. There was a lot happening. I could find something real to talk about by paying attention to what was in front of me.
The crowd wasn't my first conversation of the day
On the walk from wherever I had parked, I had already chatted with a couple of strangers. I explained that before stepping into the busiest part. I liked giving myself a smaller interaction before taking on something harder.
I had also talked about what happened before leaving the house: reading something I could get into, remembering a small experience when my speech was better and playing music that helped change how I felt.
Those were parts of how I prepared. By the time you saw the crowd, I was already using my voice.
A missed trash can gave me an opening
A man threw something toward a trash can and missed. I saw it and said, “Hey, so that was pretty close man.”
That was the whole opening. We both knew what had just happened. I didn't have to come up with a subject from nowhere. I commented in the moment, then explained why I liked that kind of spontaneous start.
It is the sort of thing I mean when I say to look at what you have in common. Sometimes what you have in common is simply standing there when something happens.
Football gave us somewhere to go
Later I said, “Go Gators man!” I'm a Florida graduate and a Gator fan. We started talking about the team. I brought up having thought we might fire the coach, then how things had turned around and the recruiting class had improved.
We also talked about Florida and Florida State. I ended with, “Alright buddy.”
The subject was something I was interested in. I could comment, hear the other person and respond. I didn't have the whole exchange written in my head before I started it. That is what I wanted the example to show.
Some of the moments were much smaller
A man looked at me, I looked back and said a quiet “hey.” Elsewhere I said, “Hello. How are you? Good morning.” I pointed out that those small things were ways I could use my voice too.
Every person I passed didn't become a long conversation. I was practicing the ordinary moments of being there and talking.
Coming back gave an exchange some history
At one stall, I asked whether the woman's son was there. I had met him before. She said he was getting her hot chocolate. I said, “Oh, he's a good son,” and told her I would stop by again.
Then I explained that you can build relationships by returning to the same places. That interaction started from a person I remembered. It had a little history already.
I also talked about when I wished I had left
During this same walk, I retold the earlier embroidery-store incident. It happened in a different place, when I had gone to help a friend get a patch made. A man asked me to repeat my name for his buddy after hearing me struggle with it.
I explained that I had felt something was wrong and wished I had walked away. Learning to talk in public also included learning that I could leave a bad interaction. That whole experience is part of what shaped my judgment.
The market used to feel like one big world I did not know how to enter. By the time of this recording, there were smaller things I knew how to do inside it: have a conversation on the way in, notice an opening, ask a question, say hello and return to somebody I had met.
Those are the decisions behind the walk. They came through years of practicing, and I still used them when I filmed it.