Cliché du Jour
Every now and again patterns emerge in my speech which take me some time to erradicate. These range from simple components of a word or two, to repeated imagery and concepts. Some of the worst to ever strike have been “actually” and “rather.” Those each took me weeks to work out of my system (which I don’t consider fully purged until the replacement patterns, which have weaned me off the original whilst retaining the same usefulness and general structure, are also removed).
Currently I’m fighting “moving parts.” This metaphor has been extremely helpful in quickly describing the absolute complexity of the information systems at work, and the danger of introducing new, untested, or unknown factors. It also easily applies to the difficulty in keeping details straight in the overlap of home and work during the move to the new house. Too may things in either environment are losing out to an urgent counterpart in the other, and I end up being globally ineffectual because of it.
Given the situational hold, I think it will be some time before it stops being so useful; especially since I’m continuing to bring new staff on and it does illustrate that environment so aptly. I don’t mind this one so much.
There are other minor ones I’m still trying to boot though, including “abberrant,” “significant” & “significantly ( increases | reduces ),” and “still” & “just.” Makes me feel like uneducated and incomplete, with little control of my own mechanisms for communication. I should be a creature of rythm, but not habit – I want to make those decisions consciously instead of falling back to some pre-fabbed styrofoam packaged McPhrase.
At least it’s not so far as to be media buzz words like “persistent vegitative state” and “weapons of mass destruction.” I feel dirty typing those – even subverbalizing them. *shudder*
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