Tag: words

koinophobia – n. the fear that you’ve lived an ordinary life.

The last one of the year. I’ve enjoyed reading through this dictionary, learning new (made up) words, and thinking about life. Hope you have as well.

What’s an ordinary life? I think that’s what life is for many of us, though we have lots of little ups and downs, joys and sorrows, important events to us.

When I was younger, like many, I think I wanted to be a professional athlete or a rock star or a movie star or someone famous. Later, as I went through school and the tech booms, I wanted to be a rich tech person.

None of those happened, but I’ve had an amazing life. I think in many ways, it’s very pedestrian, and I walk through my days doing ordinary and simple things. I work at a desk, I shop for groceries, I go to the gym, I fix things around the house, I feed horses on the ranch.

I am also blessed to travel for work and stand on stage in front of many people. However, lots of my friends do the same thing.

I know I’m famous in a very narrow, weird way, but I also very much enjoy my anonymity in most of my life. I appreciate the time I have with others in my family, friend group, and community, as someone just participating in life with them.

I have no koiniphobia, not because of my life, but because everyone I know has their own interesting, unique, exciting things in their life. We don’t need to be on stage or in the media to live a very unordinary life. That’s what life is.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

whipgraft delusion – n. the phenomenon in which you catch your reflection in the mirror and get the sense that you’re peering into the eyes of a strange, as if you’re looking at a police sketch of your own face aged forward twenty years, which would imply the real you is out there somewhere, wandering the streets of your old neighborhood, still at large.

Twenty years? More like thirty.

I thought about this as I don’t really look at myself in the mirror often.I certainly see myself, putting in contacts, brushing teeth, shaving, but I don’t often look closely.

However, once in awhile I’ll look at myself and while I don’t always mentally feel or act my age, I don’t feel this old. However, if I look closely, I realize I look old. As old as my knees and back feel some days. Definitely some whipgraft delusion.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

nementia – n. the post-distraction effort to recall the reason you’re feeling particularly anxious or angry or excited, trying to retrace your sequence of thoughts like a kid gathering the string of a downed kite.

I’m pretty level headed, but sometimes I over-react to something and may get angry, upset, etc. Sometimes I have to go through the process, but often my wife might interrupt the thoughts, asking me to go through some nementia and figure out why I reacted this way.

Like the rest of us, I’m human, I do silly things, and I sometimes can’t figure out why I reacted that way.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

giltwrights  – n. the imaginary committee of elders that keeps a running log of your mistakes, steadily building their case that you’re secretly a fraud, a coward, a doofus, and a douche – who would’ve revoked your good fortune years ago had they not been hampered by their own bitter squabblings over proper grammar and spelling.

I have anxiety at times about the mistakes I make. I tend not to dwell for too long, but I do sometimes find myself wondering if there are others who’d find me lacking, fire me, stop being a friend, etc. if they knew how many times I’ve made mistakes.

Across my career, and across decades, I’ve learned to admit mistakes often and expect them. I’ve learned that I am frail and faulty, and I have to accept that. I also need to try to not make easily-preventable mistakes, or big ones, but accept that those might happen.

I don’t think I’m often concerned about the guiltwrights at my age, but I did feel they were watching me often in my teens and 20s.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows