The unexpected compliment

So today at work, I was emailing back and forth with a colleague of mine (who also happens to be a Guy I Like – GIL [that is what he shall be named from now on: GIL from work]).

(Okay, so this obviously isn’t the GIL from work. But since you don’t actually know what he looks like, feel free to imagine that he looks like James McAvoy. Then I'll daydream and do the same.)

I was explaining to him that when I was a child, I used to look forward to getting mail, but now I'm dreading it because it is almost always a bill. His reply to that mail totally made my day and not in a way I would have expected.

I would have loved for him to ask me out, to tell me that he liked me, to tell me he thought I was the most wonderful woman in the whole universe. Instead, this is what he said (translated [and paraphrased a tiny bit]):

"You have a cool way with words.. I'm kindda seeing a little film in my head because of it. :) Awesome. :)" 

I don’t know him very well. Yes, I have a crush on him, but he is by no means in my inner circle of friends. Far from it. He is simply a Guy I Like from work. And he liked reading my words. The words that I wrote. I think he’s the first person to ever compliment my writing, without being socially obligated too (such as family, teachers or close friends).

What made it even more awesome was that I wasn’t even trying to write anything spectacular. I wasn’t trying to set a mood, to convey character emotion, to write a funny dialogue. I was just writing in my own voice, telling him about how I felt about something as trivial as my mail.

And he liked the way I wrote it. He could picture the words that I wrote and that is just amazing. Something I wrote, created an image in somebody else’s head (that’s almost like telepathy, right? Right.)

Nothing he could’ve said would have made me happier. Not even a declaration of love.

In fact, I think this is better, because this compliment didn’t reflect on me as a person or how he saw me. It was a compliment to my skills with words.

This GIL from work and I might never be anything more than what we are now, but even if all he ever gives me, is this one compliment, then I’ll be grateful.

And it motivated me to actually write tonight and not just watch Chuck.*



*Chuck is a television show about a computer geek working as a Tech-supporter at a Buy More, who is pulled into the spyworld when a bunch of top-secret information is downloaded into his brain. It’s funny and quirky and you should watch this trailer for it – yeah okay, so I watch a lot of television shows. Like, A LOT.