How to be interesting?

I was chatting with Valerie and Leung Yan about self-improvement, and it seems to be a recurring point that in order to improve yourself, you need to know yourself. Or anything else for that matter. In order to change things for the better, you need to know what flaws there are so you can eradicate them, and what is the eventual state you want to achieve. You can't just keep yearning to be better without knowing what's holding you back, and not knowing what exactly you want to be.

I bought The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, because I wanted to own a copy of the book. Here is one part that I liked:

As a rule, I do not recall my dreams. At the approach of day, their plots inevitably fade. So why did last December's dreams etch themselves into my memory with the precision of a laser beam? Perhaps that is how it is with coma. Since you never return to reality, your dreams don't have the luxury of evaporating. Instead they pile up, one upon another, to form a long ongoing pageant whose episodes reucr with the insistence of a soap opera.

About playing hangman with his son:
Still engrossed in the game, he moves in for the kill. Two more letters: he has won and I have lost. On a corner of the page he completes his drawing of the gallows, the rope and the condemned man.

So much is being said in so little. And how else can he make himself explicit, seeing how he doesn't have the capacity to waste words? Really strikes a chord in me. Does it have to take a life-changing experience for one to appreciate life and its intricacies? By then, it would probably be too late, wouldn't it?

Anyways! I think I am becoming an extremely dull person to speak to. Let me explain how this started. I am highly drawn to interesting people; people who are queer, eccentric, and have interesting things to say at all times. However, they will inadvertently speak about themselves all the time, because the reason why they say interesting things is because they are interesting people. That would make them quite self-absorbed people. People who only talk about themselves and their thoughts would most definitely be labelled as self-absorbed, yes?

Which leads me to the conclusion that interesting people are generally self-absorbed.

I can't help but feel that everytime I communicate with someone, I am being self-absorbed, because I am extrapolating their ideas onto mine. My input comes into play and the self-absorption is inevitable. Self-absorbed is defined as "preoccupied with one's thoughts, interests, etc" in Dictionary.com. Remember the quote, "to be interesting, be interested"? Therein lies a dilemma for me. One of my top interests is what other people think. I would even venture to say that I am preoccupied with what other people think. Doesn't that make me self-absorbed, because I am preoccupied with my interest in other people?

Okay this is getting nowhere, and is extremely confusing. I am somehow unable to verbalise my confusion and the feeling that something is amiss.

1. Interesting people are self-absorbed.
2. Self-absorbed is defined as "preoccupied with one's thoughts, interests, etc".
3. To be interesting, be interested.
4. My interest lies in what other people are interested in.
5. I end up talking obsessively about my interest, which is what other people are thinking about.

Am I (a)truly interested in them, or (b)just self-absorbed because I am preoccupied with my interest in them?

Wow. I just realised that whether it is (a) or (b), they both would qualify me as an interesting person. Since interesting = interested and interesting also = self-absorbed. Whee. Dilemma solved! I am an interesting person anyhow!

Man, that was so utterly futile, I don't know why I exhaust my brain cells meandering through this train of thought that goes back to where it started.