Garrulous: (adjective): excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters, e.g. ‘a garrulous cab driver’
Origin: early 17th century: from the Latin garrulus (from garrire ‘to chatter, prattle’) + -ous.
This possibly horrendous idea originated with an experiment last year on Medium called 100 Naked Words - the idea being to write at least one hundred words a day about something, anything, but to just write. I told the editor of the publication at the time about my ‘Year of Living Gratefully’. As some readers would know - all three of you - I undertook a gratitude post every day on my old blog for a whole year. 365 posts about finding something to be grateful for. Every goddamn day. It taught me many things both great and small; the biggest ones being the difference between happiness and gratitude, that they don’t have to be concurrent, and yes, you can find grace and gratitude in a day without happiness and joy – in fact, a sense of gratitude can sometimes save you from utter despair.
These words are not to be about feeling grateful. I thought long and hard about ‘naked’ words. What do I try hardest to conceal in my life? I mean, all writers, at whatever level in their development, conceal or reveal more – or less – dependent on mood, audience, topic, and writing form… but this, this is different. Because these babblings, whether it's because they come from a random word or not, feel like so much more. They are laying bare a piece of me, rather than a writing technique, or a clever twist of lemon-rubbed dry martini-esque prose (she wishes).
Since moving it to my own site, the idea of writing those naked words is now a section unto itself, and it does have a small lemon-bitter twist. It's about stripping my thoughts on something fairly specific down to the bone, but with no knowledge beforehand of what the topic will lead off from - and in this instance, stripping off some clothes as well. Every week, Google smashes a new Word of the Week into my inbox. Beforehand - no idea what it will be. But somehow I need to make it relate to life as it is for someone with an incurable illness, or two. Maybe three. (That would be me). It will probably not just be about me, because yawn, however I will be a big part of it. This is because my word of a lifetime is EGOTISTICAL (a.k.a. WRITER).
You may be bored as hell. You may learn something. You may be inspired. Who knows? Hopefully not the former, or this will be a very short one week at a time – one, to be exact. You may also notice a gap in dates - between my getting le shit, as they say, together, and deciding to put the (original) posts up, and then going forth with the idea. Don't worry. You missed very, very little.
Don't forget, on THIS post, I have included some semi-naked limbs which hint very vaguely at lewdness. That has to be worth something, y'know, the old attention grabber.
Oh - my word of the week was garrulous.
Which explains an awful lot.
See you next week. Possibly.
