I’m starting this blog to tell a story, and hopefully to learn how to write one. I’ve always had huge ideas, wonderful ones, weird ones, and bad ones all floating around in my head, and I’ve never been able to figure out a way to get them out. I can write well, speak well, but somehow there always seems to be a disconnect between the idea part of my mind and the words needed to express it.
But never mind all that. This whole thing won’t sound so self-involved, I promise. No, actually that’s a lie. This is a blog, which by definition, is all about being self-involved. What I meant is it won’t sound so maudlin. Another problem I experience is using a definition I made up myself for a word – which may or may not be correct. I have an averagely large vocabulary I believe, and almost all of it comes from reading books. This means that almost all of my definitions I form myself by deducing the meaning of a word by the meaning of the sentence or paragraph in which it was placed.
So, every once in awhile it just so happens that I find a word that I assigned a meaning to, which is usually close to correct, but is not, in fact, sensical. The best example I can think of this actually happened not too long ago. My family is non-religious, I’m non-religious, and the word that I had always used for this was “secular”. If someone asked something along the lines of “What church were you brought up on” or some such, my answer would be “I wasn’t. My family is secular.” I didn’t notice that I was using the word incorrectly for the longest time because other people always seemed to know what I meant. Which I think means that most people don’t really know the definition of “secular” but that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, I was wrong. Sort of. More-or-less. “Secular” is not, in fact, a word that you would generally use to describe your family’s tendency towards being non-religious.
Boy was I embarrassed when I found out. I like to pride myself in being intelligent, well-read, and well-informed. And yet, I had somehow managed to miss the fact that I was using a word incorrectly on a regular basis for years.
Oh well. I suppose humble pie is like plain yoghurt – completely unappetizing, but you know that it’s good for you every once in awhile.
