And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor
Over the past couple weeks I've been thinking about words: what they mean, how they're used, why they fail. My QWERTY meme (DOA in the water as it was) was a part of this logospection, and it sort of led to this journal too.
Words are a big part of who I am: vocabularian, creative writer, snarky punster. So --since I've mildly lost my identity in the past few months-- I've been trying to find it in words.
PAUSE.
"Lost my identity" sounds really melancholy and fat-girl-in-middle-school-ish. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that one year ago, I was a college student spending most of my academic time reading and critiquing, my parents paid for my food, books and shelter, I was in the Inner Circle of an improv theater where I spent at least a fifth of my waking life, I worked for maybe 10 hours a week, and I lived by the words 'rarely to bed and rarely to rise, period.'
Now, that's all changed. I'm working 40 hours a week, paying rent, and a fifth of my waking life is spent waiting for Tuesday when new DVDs come out at Best Buy, Wednesday when new comics come out, Wednesday night when I get to read something at Graham Street Salon, and Friday night, when I usually play video games until I can't keep my eyes open.
So, yeah, that sounds a lot less melancholy. Sigh.
UNPAUSE.
In any case, I've been thinking about what word people are, specifically what word I am. I definitely fall in with the theory that there's a True Name for everything, but that's possibly not going to even be intelligible, so I count true True Names as annoying and not worth my time. However, True Words are a different story. My theory is that --just as we assume traits and vague genders to numbers and household tools-- there is a word out there whose personification/anthropomorphic figure is You.
Or at least your concept of yourself.
So, I've been thinking. Obviously, it's not just the meaning of the word you have to look at; there's also the letters themselves, the length of the word, how it sounds, what it looks like, the color it suggests to you, the emotional resonance with your life...
Yeah, I'm a total word empath. Who's surprised?
I figured out my word yesterday. It fits all the criteria above, as well as dozens of smaller categories I didn't name. It's odd because I attach such significance to it that I hesitate to post it... but simultaneously, I wrote this journal solely because I wanted to put it out there.
Wait. No. It's not odd; it's how I live my life. Damnation, you bifurcation!
Anyway, after all that, I'm not going to post my True Word. It was one of my QWERTY 'first picks' though. There. I've totally given it away, haven't I.
(head hits desk in exhaustion)
.
Words are a big part of who I am: vocabularian, creative writer, snarky punster. So --since I've mildly lost my identity in the past few months-- I've been trying to find it in words.
PAUSE.
"Lost my identity" sounds really melancholy and fat-girl-in-middle-school-ish. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that one year ago, I was a college student spending most of my academic time reading and critiquing, my parents paid for my food, books and shelter, I was in the Inner Circle of an improv theater where I spent at least a fifth of my waking life, I worked for maybe 10 hours a week, and I lived by the words 'rarely to bed and rarely to rise, period.'
Now, that's all changed. I'm working 40 hours a week, paying rent, and a fifth of my waking life is spent waiting for Tuesday when new DVDs come out at Best Buy, Wednesday when new comics come out, Wednesday night when I get to read something at Graham Street Salon, and Friday night, when I usually play video games until I can't keep my eyes open.
So, yeah, that sounds a lot less melancholy. Sigh.
UNPAUSE.
In any case, I've been thinking about what word people are, specifically what word I am. I definitely fall in with the theory that there's a True Name for everything, but that's possibly not going to even be intelligible, so I count true True Names as annoying and not worth my time. However, True Words are a different story. My theory is that --just as we assume traits and vague genders to numbers and household tools-- there is a word out there whose personification/anthropomorphic figure is You.
Or at least your concept of yourself.
So, I've been thinking. Obviously, it's not just the meaning of the word you have to look at; there's also the letters themselves, the length of the word, how it sounds, what it looks like, the color it suggests to you, the emotional resonance with your life...
Yeah, I'm a total word empath. Who's surprised?
I figured out my word yesterday. It fits all the criteria above, as well as dozens of smaller categories I didn't name. It's odd because I attach such significance to it that I hesitate to post it... but simultaneously, I wrote this journal solely because I wanted to put it out there.
Wait. No. It's not odd; it's how I live my life. Damnation, you bifurcation!
Anyway, after all that, I'm not going to post my True Word. It was one of my QWERTY 'first picks' though. There. I've totally given it away, haven't I.
(head hits desk in exhaustion)
.