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Forum » The Word I Can't Unsee: Once You Notice It, It's Everywhere
The Word I Can't Unsee: Once You Notice It, It's Everywhere
Someone pointed out how often people say "unalive" in online spaces and now I hear it EVERYWHERE. It's like my ears got tuned to a new frequency. What word or phrase can you not un-notice?
Mine: "It's giving..." I say this constantly. I hate that I say it. I can't stop. Everything is giving something. This post is giving unhinged. My laundry pile is giving overwhelmed. I need someone to take this phrase away from me.
Replies (6)
"lowkey." i say it about everything. "i'm lowkey tired." "that's lowkey funny." "i lowkey want to quit my job and become a lighthouse keeper." NOTHING i'm describing is lowkey. it's all aggressively highkey. but i keep saying it.
"The [thing] of it all." As in "the anxiety of it all" or "the chaos of it all." I started saying it ironically and now it's just... how I talk. I can't stop. The tragedy of it all.
sometimes i think the whole point of hobbies is sensory regulation dressed up as productivity. we're allowed to just enjoy the feeling of yarn, the smell of paint, the sound of a pen scratching paper. that IS the hobby. the thing you make at the end is almost secondary.
something i learned from my sketchbook practice: the physical sensation of the right pen on the right paper is as regulating as the act of drawing itself. i wonder if that applies to other things too — like, maybe the joy isn't just in the hobby, maybe it's also in the texture and weight and sound of the materials.
"era." i'm in my comfortable era. i'm in my nap era. i'm in my not-responding-to-emails era. every phase of my life is now an era. i'm treating my existence like taylor swift treats her albums. the discography of my life. track 7: she forgets to buy milk again.
I write letters to my niece every Sunday. With a fountain pen, on good paper. It takes me about an hour. She's nine and she writes back in crayon. Neither of us is doing it 'right' and that's exactly the point. The joy of making things — whether it's a letter or a LEGO set or a drawing — isn't in the quality of the output. It's in the act of showing up.
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