motivation, or Wanting to do Stuff

I suppose this is really about motivation. Motivation is something I don't really understand. Sometimes you want to do something and sometimes you don't. There are things you yearn to do RIGHT NOW! This could be going on holiday somewhere gloriously warm and sunny, drinking a cool beer on a hot day or rushing off to bed with your lover. There are things which, if they were immediately accessable to you, you would have a hard time resisting.
Then there are other things you would rather not do, in fact, you would avoid if possible. Washing up, cleaning the toilet, perhaps even going to work: Tasks that make your spirit sink when you think of their imminent need for attention.
And in between is a whole spectrum of activities of differing levels of attractiveness.

Somewhere along the line from simple early eukaryote to human, the neural reward system developed. The ubiquitously hailed dopamine became the substance of choice for directing the behaviour of organisms. Oddly, it is required to make us eat, mate, even learn: When we encounter a new fact or experience, we get a tiny but pleasurable squish of dopamine to the receptors that tell us "That was GOOD!". Without it, it appears we would just not bother, which seems strange: Surely we need to eat and surely sex is so pleasurable that we would if we could? Actually, it seems not and this appears to be the reason for the existence of this reward mechanism.

So, on an experiential level, there seems to be a variability. Last weekend, i took my kayak to the sea. For so long have i languished here, in this office or working at my desk at home, dreaming about being in big clean, glassy waves, riding down and along in the salty sunshine and howling with the sheer joy of it. And last weekend, that is precisely what I did. At least for two days.
And on the third day, the surf was still good, but somehow, I just didnt want to any more. So, I went fishing instead.

Appetite, I can understand. I get hungry. I eat. My body produces a hormone called leptin which says " Ok, stop eating now. No need to eat any more. All the digestive buffers are now full to optimum capacity!" At this point, satisfaction is achieved and all is as it should be. (A fortuitous position to be in, I appreciate).

And then there is sex. When i was 14 I was, as gender, hormonal disposition and age dictated, overly preoccupied with sex. Its glory and mystery pevaded all my thoughts and many of my actions and it seemed the most exciting activity one could ever want to participate in.
Then when I was 35, I woke up one morning and found it was no more of interest to me. Admittedly, a huge grey cloud had settled over my mind which would take some years to dislodge fully, but sex was as interesting to me as the study of ancient mesopotamian trumpets, or the lifecycle of the woodworm. Something had happened on a psychological level, which had in turn produced a chemical and hence physiological effect. It was pretty wretched and I missed wanting it. But I didnt want it. I do now. Not quite to the 14 year old level, but still fairly insistently, which I am grateful for, though it frustrates the hell out of me on many many occasions!

Sometimes I dance. I love to dance. I cant wait for Tuesday evening when I can get my dancing shoes on, take to the floor and spin some ladies round and hop and wiggle my hips in time to the music. It gives me sometimes an almost spiritual lift.
But occasionally, I sit at the edge of the dance floor, looking into the melee of mostly in-time bodies, and feel I would rather be elsewhere. The glorious euphoria I know to be possible from this activity, is suddenly absent and it leaves me cold. Somewhere in an instant, the desire to do this evaporated leaving in its place a kind of desolate boredom or even repulsion. How does this happen?

So, what confuses me is, how one moment, one can want to do only one thing to the exclusion of all other passtimes - enthusiasm may overcome one and a kind of hot, happy itch is inside you until you get to do it - and in the next moment, a comment, a thought, an event can puncture the bubble of enthusiasm and all passion is suddenly dispersed, leaving only a flatness.

I pose these questions not particularly because I require immediate answers to them, but because in those moments, I WANT to desire to do those things. The removal of the imperative upsets and depresses me.
The sudden disappearance of motivation leaves me poorer and less happy.

If one could only find the key to what makes one really want to do a certain thing one moment, and then not particularly want to do it the next, how empowering that would be! I could get those tasks done that I put off for ever. I could get good at things I always intended to practise and never really could be bothered to, despite me intense desire for their end result.

Possibly too much introspection on this process is a bad thing. Perhaps it is again "Thinking TOo Much" which I have found to be disruptive, even destructive, in the past. ut when I am sat there feeling sorry for myself and everyone is having a good time gyrating to some groovy tune, I really would like to find some way to rejoin the party.

The wholesome and the stimulating

I had a fantastic weekend: Three days at the beach, two surfing my kayak and one just paddling along the North Devon coast just exploring. The surf was a bit insane on Saturday and what with the injuries sustained by my face and my boat coming together in the boiling chaos of a wave that was way too big for my current capabilities, I decided eventually to forego any further thrills in the surf while my smashed nose stopped bleeding.
But a good time was had and I felt mellow with that radio silence inside my head that I only get after a serious amount of time in the sea. Silence such as this is a welcome relief from the usual clamour of suggestions, arguments, revelry and confusion that characterises the inside of my head most of the time and for a while I like it.
I noticed however that I was a bit distant, though calm and relatively content, for the rest of the weekend after each trip out on the water. Questions would be asked like "Where is the tin opener?" and "What did you do with the mallet?" and I found myself either quiet with amused bafflement at the question or just plain "out to lunch".
It occurs to me that with my small dabblings with meditation that this "quiet" is not actually a good thing from the perspective of imaginative productivity or what I might term, my general "peteness". (People have come to expect a certain liveliness and bouncing around of tempo from me).

Last night, I worked on my allotment, which I have had for a decade or more. I planted up some courgettes that were long overdue for transplanting but which had to wait on account of my other, aforementioned passtimes.
I pottered around and prepared some beds wich had been languishing under black landscape fabric for nearly a year and were consequently lovely and easy to dig.
I left the place partly completed awaiting growth and subsequent harvest and other ground prepared and languishing in the feeling of potential that prepared ground always leaves me with.
It was very satisfying. A good wholesome feed for the soul. And I left feeling quiet and mellow.
And yet, when I came to talk later, I found my head devoid of the usual buffet of tasty conceptual treats, buzzing sparking notions and whimsical trains of thought that I generally enjoy when left to my own devices on an aeroplane or in a dentist's waiting room.
I had, I felt, somehow, lost that "spark" that people comment on and which characterises one of the reasons I enjoy being me.

So, mellow spiritual creaminess: Is it a good thing? It might bring a kind of peace, but after a while, how does it leave us?

And if we are in this state permanently, and feeling fainly content with it, is that a bad thing?

I confess that I see many pallid faces on a daily basis which seem happy to be devoid of any other thinking beyond what is for the next meal, who will win Britain's Got an Excruciating Lack of Embarrassment, or where to go on holiday this year. Is that a bad thing?

I feel it is, for me, a bad thing. So often, it is a joy to let the mind run, like a greyhound kept in a small flat who has been let out on some huge common to bound with delight over the ant hills and over the bracken. Occasionally to race with or frolic with a like minded soul who is released to run, or who live wild and free on the Heath brings a realisation of what is possible. The changes of pace, the sharp turns and twists and the sure-footed grace and speed is exhilarating.Surely you know what I mean with this?

And then, the confinement which seemed mildly comforting such a short time before, suddenly seems a shame, a waste, a minor tragedy of potential.

Radio silence is good for a while. This much is clear. But in moderation.
Wholesome is healthy as long as it is not all there is. To run across the horizon of the mind as fast as one likes can be a release for the soul and allow the full functionality of a personality, but probably done all the time would result in a kind of scatteredness of focus leading to drifting.

And so once again, the most important word in the English language appears to be "balance".
At the moment, the flights of glorious fancy and resultant enjoyable melee are too few and fleeting. Wholesomeness has become the norm and like bran consumed to excess, is beginning to cause an irritation that will need some richness of diet to relieve.
Now where can I find such a morsel?

©Pete Earlam 2009

A drought or climate change?

There was a time when ideas fair tumbled from my mind. The pressure of all the thoughts and their associated tangents was almost too much to bear. The inside of my head was like some riotous after-show party in a theatre of the absurd and the only way to ease the discomfort was to write them down. To choose one thread and express it, with all is associations and implications, was to make some space where the rest could grow and flourish and the gap thus made was a breathing space of sorts.

It seemed as though there was a never ending spring of inspiration. I didnt know where it came from: Seemingly from some deep down natural source with equal mystery to the endless flows that pop out of the Cotswold hills hereabouts. There seemed no end to it.

And then I noticed the reduction in the rate of flow. There were interruptions and eventual cessation of supply. The space inside became bigger until my mind contained mostly void and a kind of desert of the soul resulted from the lack of irrigation. Where a once lush jungle filled my inner spaces, replete with luscious fruits and brightly coloured fluttering things, now there was only hard baked ground with the odd skeleton of a dead tree standing starkly against the sky to remind me of what once was there.
The dry soil yields enough for subsistence but its not what one would call a flourishing.

So, where did it go? What happened or stopped happening to cause this profusion to shrink to such a meagre harvest? Is there a dam somewhere which may burst? It doesnt feel like it actually. It just feels as if it stopped raining somewhere, as if the damp fecundity of Summer showers or the deluge of welcome monsoons somewhere just over the horizon has ceased due to some inevitable shifting of weather patterns outside of my control.

Certainly, there have been droughts before and they ended after a fashion. But this time it feels different: As if some internal El Nino has been redirected by the course of life and a huge high pressure region has held the course of the winds and rains elsewhere.

The strange thing is, it is not unpleasant. I miss the growth and fertility, certainly, but there is a kind of calm in its place - an undemanding constancy of existence that brings no discomfort. Will it stay this way? I don't know. It has been some time now and it shows no sign really of improving. There is the odd small shower that happens and green and flowers are briefly in evidence. But it rarely stays for long. My fear is that though it is no hardship, the dry winds may blow away all the topsoil; an irreversable process preventing future regrowth.
Were I superstitious, I would pray for rain, rain on the inside. Seeds blown in from elsewhere cannot germinate here without my own fertile soils to allow them to take root. But for now, I will wander, sipping from the odd oasis and trying not to walk in circles in the featurelessness of my own mind.

The consciousness of lobsters

I am in the railway station at Angers, in western France. It is a pretty town and the station is a light and airy place with lots of glass and very little litter. My French reappeared at about lunchtime in the restaurant where I had a salad with foie gras (which I feel I shouldnt like on moral grounds, but actually find utterly irresistable for its delicious richness and sheer opulence). Also on this salad were a couple of L'angustines and some gambas. Crustaceans always seem a little hapless to me. Aquatic relatives of woodlice, showing all too clearly their kinship in the number and design of their legs and carapaces. I find them, frankly, unappetising when the inescapable alienness of their joints are contemplated. Also I find them far too labour intensive for the meagre amount of food you get from them. Dismantling of the cleverly seamless shell is a rather distasteful and fiddly task, I feel.
I gave them to my appreciative companion, having made a mess of the first fumblings with extraction of the edible bits.
The little face staring back at me from the now detached head appeared to have an air of pathos in its expression. Its beady black eyes seemed to implore me to feel ashamed of my choice from the menu. I felt a bit sorry for it. I shall not ever order one again.

But I wondered briefly how much of a sense of self this tiny lobster had. Whilst alive, any threatening stimulus would have had its mechanisms for self-preservation activated in an instant. But would that be merely an invoking of a mechanistic subroutine of programmed behaviour or would there have been a flicker of something resembling true fear in its little cluster of a few dozen million neurons?

I once attended a lecture by the magnificent Susan, now Baroness Greenfield (Baroness always conjures up an image of a large, ample-bosomed lady in a valkyrie outfit wielding her stern expression like an intimidating sword at all who dare to gaze upon her. She is not like this but equally, I feel, formidable in her own intellectual way).
At this lecture she appeared to be saying that the level of consciousness exhibited by any creature with a brain was a function of the number of neurons actively participating in any one single curcuit at that time. As an example, there was a photo of a man taking a step off a bungee-jump platform. He was not, we assume, overly preoccupied at that moment, with the minutiae of life: The mortgage rate, whether he had the right insurance cover, whether his car would pass the MOT or even whether his job was safe. No, his single focus was far more existential at that moment: "I AM GOING TO DIE!! IMMINENTLY! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!"

And it is arguably at these moments, for instance when every single neuron is unable to tear its attention away from the prospect of imminent death, that we feel most alive.
The rest of the time, a myriad of smaller circuits are tying up our neural resources. They chatter away with minor preoccupations and our attention is scattered and hence we feel less "conscious". We have all had that experience of arriving at work in the car having driven perfectly safely on autopilot, whilst having had a number of in-depth conversations with ourselves over various riveting topics. At these times, it seems we are not really all that "conscious".
And so, by implication, if the most profound consciousness can be achieved with the maximum recruitment of neurons to a single task, animals with fewer neurons available are arguably less conscious. A chimpanzee is, for example, less conscious than a human. And a dog, less conscious than a chimp and so on, down to crustaceans and beyond.

Hence my crustacean friend probably had only the dimmest awareness of the surface of the boiling water that signalled its impending end and absolutely no faculty to contemplate its fate.
I suspect therefore that it did not actually feel fear in any sense that we understand it.
Or perhaps my reasoning is not correct. Perhaps dogs are more conscious because they dont end up worrying about their mortgages and are completely "In the moment". Actually, I am not sure there is any answer to this question since it is how to define what we mean by conscious.
But I know subjectively, there are times when I am more "alive" than others. In those times I am more aware of sensations and colours, details of my environment seem more accessable; in fact my surroundings leap out at me and impress themselves upon my consciousness, whereas much of the time, I find I have to make a conscious effort to notice or be.

I think Baroness Greenfield's point stands and is useful: that a convergence of our neurons on a single task - in practical terms, our "attention" - brings the most subjective experience of consciousness.
Indeed, this is one of the aims of most types of meditation. I have never been very good at meditation. The chattering of my brain tends to make the aim of "mindfulness" very difficult. I get bored and need something to occupy my immense sense of curiosity.

But when I have "succeeded" in attaining that point of "awareness with no thought", it is a very clear moment. There is a quietness which is exquisite and can be observed without any narrative. At those moments too, I feel most conscious. But i dont have the time or the awareness to do it regularly and though there are undoubtedly benefits from regular meditation practise, I have other uses for my brain and my time.
Incidentally, research shows that regular meditators have significant growth in the layers of cells (need research here) that appear to deal with compassion and planning. Meditation, then, has physical effects which possibly may bring benefits in mental function.

And so, where does this get us? Well, making the assumption that "feeling really alive" is a good thing to aim for, we can try the approach suggested by the good Lady. Though we don't have to go as far as a bungee jump (not without its risks, or why would anyone do it?) we can do things which use up our whole mental bandwidth with none left over for idle preoccupation.
Activities i have found which do this are climbing, because I don't want to fall off even though i am roped up, dancing and occasionally any water sports involving surf (though not always, I find: If the surf isnt "right" I can end up very dissatisfied.)
But doing those things that fill our entire brain with a single activity can take us near or to the "really alive" stage. At least, it works for me, and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate it does for most people.
Whether it works for prawns, I have no idea.

alternative wildlife

At the end of my small garden is a mixed-native-tree hedge. We planted it about 10 years ago and it contains hawthorn, beech, holly and hornbeam. It has developed into a beautiful good old-fashioned hedge such as surrounded most fields here in Gloucestershire when I was a kid. As such, it provides not only a secure and attractive backdrop to the end of the garden but a haven for wildlife. It might only be 40 feet long but you would be surprised at how many visitors it gets.
The garden also contaons a stand of three closely planted silver birches which by clever design, makes the garden feel more soacious and whose white trunks stand out strikingly againt the backdrop of the rest of the garden.
As a result, the birdlife is very varied. At any time one might see thrushes of various kinds, blackbirds (who at this time of year are shameless in their pursuit of each other for breeding purposes!), flocks of goldfinches and long-tailed-tits and a couple of fat pigeons who may well end up in a pie at some point.
The hedge seems to allow passage of the avian visitors from the nearby common and woods. It seems to be a very welcome sanctuary and causeway linking various other oases of wilderness together.
The hedge stands on a bank: Once a wall marking an ancient field boundary, it is now covered in soil and looks very naturalised.
Often, i work from home here at the dining room table or upstairs in the spare room where I have an office of sorts. Being a sociable creature, I do miss human contact when I work from home. Eventually, I find myself talking to the walls, or to my chilli seedlings on the propagator on the window ledge. I even occasionally, near the end of a long day, get small terse replies. Chillis are not great conversationalists and walls are notoriously tight-lipped.
So, it did not seem strange to find my underfed imagination set to work one day to allow me to see the other inhabitants of the hedge.
At first it was a feeling of being observed. No human could be seen, indeed, the garden and house are not overlooked.
But there was that nagging sense of someone watching me.
Not being a believer in such whimsical notions as any form of "sixth sense" (though five seems inadequate to describe the subjective experiences we have on moment-by-moment basis: What about hunger pangs and "heeby-jeebies"?) I dismissed th enotion.
But it persisted. And one day, glancing up unexpectedly, I saw a tiny green face barely bigger than a 50p piece staring at me from between the hawthorn leaves.
It looked unblinkingly at me for a few moments, a slight smile on its lips, before retreating back into the undergrowth. I blinked a few times before shaking my head and resuming my dull emails.
But gradually, other faces occasionally started to show themselves.
I initially dismissed them as pareidolia: That tendency to see patterns of faces in clouds and wood grain and suchlike that is a quirk of the human brain.
But then one day in Autumn, they finally showed themselves in full. A group of tiny people, about six inches tall, climbed down the retaining boards at the bottom which served initiall to hold the soil back before the roots took hold. They seemed very confident, although they moved quickly, as small creatures often seem to do.
A rag-tag bunch of tiny men, all in brown-green clothes, some with grass capes, others with tiny turned over wellingtons that look like they might once have belonged to action man who was now forced to carry out his missions barefoot. They carried small pointy sticks and had little baskets which contained such things as acorns, ash keys, sycamore "helicopters" and the odd shiny thing which I could not make out. I think they have a penchant for shiny things which is why car keys occasionally go missing.
The looked around showing a prudent vigilance but not in any nervous sense. Down they came to the pond and filled up little skin bags with water, lowering them down on wat appered to be the pudding string I used to keep in the kitchen drawer but which had mysteriously vanished at Christmas when the turkey needed preparing.
A cat appeared suddenly on the fence and looked down at them with what seemed to be mild fear and trepidation and then proceeded after some moments consideration, to clean itself distractedly.
They paid it no heed and carried on with their task.
The one of them, a wizened chap with a beard and tiny flat cap, looked straight at me and winked. I was taken aback and just smiled a gurn of confusion back at him as best I could manage.
Then quickly and with no signal, they hauled up their buckets and glancing about them, trekked back across the lawn where they disappeared into the stems of the bamboo thicket.
I blinked a couple of times and wondered briefly if there had been hallucinagenic bread mould on my sandwiches or similar.
And then, there was the bearded face grinning at me from the bamboo stems, just for a moment, gap toothed and mischevious.
And then it was gone.
I don't see them often, only occasionally. But they leave me presents of crab apples in September, wild garlic and small garlands of daisies, the design of which leads me to suspect feminine hands at work in whatever community they live in.
In return, I leave them food. I know they are fond of stilton. Oddly, they seem to prefer the rind and so this is what I believe is called a "win-win". And sometimes, on days such as the equinox in spring, or winter solstice, i leave them a miniature of port which I purloin from hotel rooms. After that I don't usually see them for a few days.
But in a world of keyboards and GPS, of phone masts and low-emission cars, it is comforting to have my little friends there, just out of sight. I am not sure if others see them. But I do. They brighten up the periphery of my world.
Keep an eye out round where you are. With regional variations, I am sure they must be around.

Rediscovering my words

Hello blog. Its been a while. I am not sure why. I have been mildly busy but not cripplingly so. My time has not been saturated with the need to spend all my days emailing customers, generating presentations, flying all over the lace.

Actually, I am writing this on a plane. It is the first in nearly three months. Not that business is bad or demand dried up for me or my products. No, there just hasn't been any reason to see anyone face to face.

I haven’t missed it particularly. My self-esteem hasn't suffered with the inference that I must no longer be important. I have rather found it very restful. I can have a life were I do regular things like dance and go to the gym, be there every evening for the kids to ask me questions or ignore as the whim takes them.

I have, oddly, missed the space of a couple of hours where I am forced to sit and do nothing in particular. Nobody can email me here or call my pone demanding trivial but labour-intensive tasks be performed. Perhaps that's why I got out of the habit of writing.

I miss writing though. Its as if the chaos and thrash of the inside of my head must remain unexamined and disjointed in my head.

Some thoughts and feelings I need to express. Leaving them in their raw, undefined and vague-sensation form is unsettling at best and almost physically uncomfortable at worst.

Other ideas which float about are merely pleasing to extract and play with. I get great joy from the vague nagging of a concept requesting to be untangled, described and expanded upon.

Its as if there is some kind of box in here which is full of knotted-up threads which once untangled can be woven or sewn into bright colourful tapestries. But in their raw, messy state, they just really clog up the everyday workings of my brain (which is why the milk gets absent-mindedly "put away" in the microwave or the keys get left in the front door when I go to work.

Many ideas are currently circulating in my mind and it would be a shame to let tem languish unexpressed, especially given the disruptive influence they exert over the prosaic business of day-to-day life. To write them down is cathartic and as long ago as I can remember, I have done this as a form of release.

I suppose then, that means I must be by nature a "writer" that is, one who is compelled to write for is own sanity as well as for enjoyment.

And so, there will be more: more thoughts about the many things that preoccupy me when I should be doing something else, which go round and round of their own accord inside my cranium when I am riding my bike to work (though not when I am cycling for fun, strangely. Or perhaps not strangely at all).

I d have some plans to put my eloquence to use, for now I feel entitled to allow myself the conceit that I am in fact eloquent, without so much of the guilt I previously felt at the seeming arrogance of such a claim.

I feel that I can put it to use.

People seem to enjoy reading what I write, or so they tell me. My examination of the mechanisms that inhabit the only being I have any intimate knowledge of, and how they may manifest in others as behaviours, seem to be quite popular.

But having spent fifteen years explaining complicated technical things to people, I feel I may be able to add some value to the world by helping share some of te joy that curiosity about the world gives us: science is a subject I have always found fascinating. Even before I knew it was called science, it added a piquancy to the World to know there were tings I didn't understand, but which gave me a feeling when I looked into them. The feeling was a mild, or I some cases, a powerful feeling of excitement at unpicking the happenings of the world using tools of observation. I later understood this to be the "scientific method" though to me it was still just "finding out".

I shall leave this particular thread for another time, but be assured, it will be often touched upon.

For now, I am happy to have somehow cleared a blockage. The flow is restored and the musings, ramblings and products of Pets mind will be forthcoming more regularly.

And if nobody wants to read them, never mind. I will still be the better for having written them down.

Interpersonal communication

I have been musing a lot about how, considering what social creatures we humans are, we manage to communicate so poorly on the whole. I am not sure why this should be since it seems we have every opportunity to master at least our own language and most of us have at least a modicum of ability to understand the state of mind of other people.
And so, I was reminded recently of this particular internal dialogue I had with myself. I think I understood myself, although I may get the wrong end of my own stick on occasion.
The beauty of text is that one can subsequently revise the words to edit out one's own self-contradictions. Real life, where conversations happen in real-time, mean that we do not have this luxury and here perhaps, I uncover at least one reason why poor communication results.

This was written recently on a trip to Scandinavia where a dull flight afforded many opportunities for observation:
Interpersonal communication is an imprecise art. I am, I like to think, quite articulate. By this I mean that if I have a thought, concept or emotion to describe, I can usually express it precisely and feel I have, if not conveyed it accurately, then at least clarified in my own mind what it was I was trying to say to my own satisfaction.

In addition I feel, though I may mistakenly inflate my own abilites from an observer's perspective, that I am quite astute when it comes to the protocols of conversation: I attempt to listen attentively, giving feedback with nods and "hmm, yes" kinds of backchannels at regular intervals, I make appropriate eye contact and smile in the right places. Years of sales meetings and customer dinners have made this something that comes easily to me without self-consciousness. Or so I flatter myself to believe.

Why, then, are some people easy to talk to but not others? For instance, I was talking to a slovakian lady a while ago on the way out to Hungary. For two hours we traded comments, anecdotes, opinions and replies. And it was lovely! A more interesting couple of hours on a plane I have rarely spent.
And now, across the gangway is a seemingly effervescent swedish lady who, though very personable, seems impossible to talk to for any length of time without awkward silences developing. Somehow, where last week, words came easily and naturaly as things occurred to me to say, or in response to some small story, today, the words sound thick and sticky in my mouth and my voice sounds to me unfamiliar and forced. My comment about northern living in scandinavia being a relatively recent human development and blond(e) hair being only 11000 years old met with a slow blink and puzzlement (usually I only see this in religious zealots who deny the possibility of evolution). I realised that seeding the conversation through facts she might find interesting, was not really working. I asked a few questions of her but even though I constructed "open" questions as my sales training had emphasised (and which surely people do naturally anyway?) the answers seemed to be dead ends.

So, the conversation foundered with what I think I discern as a palpable sense of failure on the part of both parties despite evident willingness from us both. So why the difference? And why was I unable to be my natural self in the former case but not the latter? The recipient? Her reactions or lack thereof? Chemistry? Maybe she just didn't want to talk to me, although I sensed that was not the case from her body language. And I am not being all Dunning Kruger here, I am sure.

Ok, Body language can be misread or even not noticed: On the bus on the way to the plane, a man was talking to (or mostly at) an elderly couple. The conversation seemed consensual, that is, both were seemingly happy to engage in it and neither of the couple seemed to want to disengage from this insensitive largely-transmit-only speaker.
The younger man was explaining to these two complete strangers many aspects of his life and they occasionally, as opportunity permitted, reciprocated with their own little sets of facts and opinions.
But why? Why do people volunteer information like this? (says I, ironically, pouring out words and ideas to unseen readers, if they exist at all.) Why are they driven to tell? And what is it that causes them to choose the particular information they offer?

In a social or mating arena possibly people divulge those thing about themselves that they think will make them appear interesting or attractive and thereby provide increased status: they offer that which will make them seem more desirable. And yet, much conversation is haphazard, some even inane, with seemingly no thought given to content or context.And in general, this is natural and quite enjoyable.

The Swedish lady is now asleep and her traveling companions are engaged in polite but distant (from their body language) conversation. This appears to be ignorantly hopeful on behalf of the man and polite, possibly to the point of defensive on the part of the young lady. And beyond the words, many other messages are unconsciously sent, received or missed. I can see them quite clearly.
He is not going to get her number. Not unless he learns to shut up and listen - to all the messages available.