Being Blatant

I like to think that I'm a relatively honest chap. I know everyone says this, but I'm quite good at keeping quiet so I don't have to. The flip side of this type of integrity is that when I do open my mouth, I tend to be quite honest.

Of course, when I say "honest" I mean brutally so. People continually accuse me of being way too brash, forward, cheeky or explicit, and to an extent I agree. I like to see it as a positive characteristic of mine, imbuing both a sense of charm and integrity at the same time.

The important thing is that I try not to be personally offensive. Now, I'm not saying that I don't ever offend those I interact with (quite the opposite, in fact!), but I think that this is more due to a disbelief that I would say such things out loud at all than to them in particular. Most people realise this once they get past the surface outrageousness of what I might have said.

I think that this lack of personal venom is important for lots of reasons. Technically it saves my bacon, as people realise that they don't really have a legitimate reason to be offended (and that I'm a nice guy really). Secondly, it reduces any sensitivity and increases the openness within a group. And finally it allows me to be the same person to all, wherever I am (as opposed to different people to different groups) and so reaffirms the integrity in my words and myself. Well, maybe anyway.

But why am I writing this? Well, as I've mentioned before that people do accuse me at times of being a bit too blatant and this in some respects is a response to that. It's not, however, an apology - no, it's more a boilerplate explanation I'll use each time some accuses me of being politically incorrect or inappropriate when in actual fact I wasn't.

Although the fact that you're still hanging around to even read this probably means that you already knew that anyway...