I love words.  I love writing certainly, but words give me chills.  A single word will cause me to pause.  It is extremely satisfying to hear a word I’d forgotten.  Most recently, hearing “agonize” and “impetuous” made me ridiculously happy.  When a word rings out and catches my attention, I stop to taste and feel it.  I will roll it around my tongue and try to wrap my muscle memory around it so that I, hopefully, won’t forget it again.

People have gotten lazy.  We don’t even write in full sentences anymore.  My kids make fun of me because I will text using complete sentences with proper spelling and punctuation.  “No one does that anymore!”

I do.

I do because it’s proper and it’s intelligent and also because I hope it involuntarily becomes ingrained in their brains for later.  I do it to set an example.  I do it because words are life.

I mourn for the loss of words.  We abbreviate our thoughts and feelings with emojis.  We bang out the punchline without even working up to it.  Conversations are tapped out in as few characters as possible.

That’s why I’m here on this blahg, writing fading words few will read.