The Optimal Life, It’s Not Perfect, Just Better!
I Was Just Wondering…
Wondering is a procrastinator’s addiction
“Hello, I’m Stephen, and I’m a procrastinator.” In case you’re not attuned, you respond in our Procrastinator’s Anonymous meeting with, “Hi Stephen.” And so our Procrastinator’s Anonymous meeting begins.
I started to pull from my ideations one of the incredibly great topics to write and post. It certainly would garner me hundreds of thousands of potential reads. But I would have to do a bit of research first, which meant deep thinking.
Before my brain kicked into advanced-level thinking, it slipped into a juvenile mode. For some reason, a loop stuck in my head of an adult male of some authority going on about the US post-election insanity. He emphatically kept repeating how he was “sick and tired.” On and on, he kept repeating the same “sick and tired” phrase to the point that I was sick and tired of hearing him say it.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
— Fannie Lou Hamer
As is natural for a master procrastinator such as myself, my brain took a left turn from logic and explored those two words which are frequently uttered together. Why? Why sick and tired? I know sick, and I know tired, and they are not in a mutually exclusive relationship. In fact, there have been many times when I was sick but not tired and tired but not sick. So, why should sick be so attached to tired?
I called out to the universe for the answer and got no reply. I’m assuming the universe was using Verizon, and that could be the reason, no service. Thankfully not having an answer only serves as fuel in my pursuit of procrastination, and the wheels kept turning to go on a quest and discover even more two-word phrases that are connected at the hip.
Here is an abbreviated list:
- Sick and tired — as discussed above, so no need to repeat
- Trials and tribulations — is a favorite as not sure if tribulations knows that trials is also hooking up with error. I cannot ever remember someone using tribulations in a sentence without trials first. What exactly is a tribulation?
- Trial and error — I’ve always assumed that if you’re on trial, then you must have made a major error.
- Hem and haw — from my experience, this is when someone isn’t getting to the point and going on way too long in the conversation.
- Here and there — thankfully, while frequently used together, they both are independent enough to stand alone.
- This and that — has no clear definition other than it has “several different meanings.” Much like their cousins here and there, this and that are also independent enough to stand on their own in most sentences.
- Cut-and-dried — is defined as “done according to a plan.” And while cut is often used, you don’t hear dried mentioned too often without its predecessor cut.
- Teeter-Totter — the definition instructed me to see seesaw, which I was afraid to do for fear of seesaw instructing me to see teeter-totter, which would have put me in an endless brain loop.
- Inhale and Exhale — I was thinking about both of these this very a.m. while I was doing the Breathe app on my Apple Watch, and it came to me. If Inhale means to breathe in and Exhale means to breathe out, then to hale must mean that you’re holding your breath. I’ve found no evidence to support my logic, but I’m going to accept it as fact all the same.
- Bye-bye — is excellent since it’s a shortened version of good-bye. So when a person tells you bye-bye, are they not wishing you the good part for some reason as a diminished good-bye? Honestly, my favorite, which is a colloquialism based on where you reside in the US, is bye-now. I love this as it’s officially ending the conversation and precisely telling you, “this conversation ends now.” Perhaps there was a time when bye-bye wasn’t conveying the message, and the other person kept on hemming and hawing. The inclusion of now was used as a replacement for the second bye. This makes sure there was no misunderstanding as to “this conversation ends now,” hence bye-now.
- Love-hate — the kind of relationship we’ve all had probably with work. We love getting the money part but hate the having to do the work part. There’s also the teen phrase of like-like. As in, does Cheryl like me, or does she like-like me? As teens get older, I’m guessing that they discover the word really, which better conveys the degree to how much Cheryl likes.
- So-so — when something isn’t good or bad. I guess this is similar to like-liking something or someone. To say the meal was just so doesn’t quite convey how mediocre it was, but to say it was so-so definitely does.
- Zig-zag — if someone were to only zig, would they just be running left, or does zig mean to go right and zag go left? Either way, if you only do one, you’ll be going in one direction. So I’m proposing globally that instead of saying left, it is now acceptable to use zig to mean left and zag to mean right. As you’re driving down the road, feel free to tell your friend they can make a zig turn at the street up ahead.
We call it the zigzag theory. You want to find something that zigs and something that zags and blend them together to get a better combined performance.
— Louis Navellier
Here are some others you can explore on your own.
- Mish-mash
- Riff-raff
- Chit-chat
- Knick-knack
- Ship-shape
- Wishy-washy
- Easy-peasy
- Flip-flops
There are many other two-word phrases that I enjoyed thinking about but realized my procrastination time was up. I need to do some real adult-like writing as this piece is a little bit wishy-washy and certainly not ship-shape, but it was easy-peasy as a mish-mash for a quick chit-chat, and I don’t think at any time there was a flip-flop.
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The Optimal Life, It’s Not Perfect, Just Better!