Clean up time & other minutiae...

Trash cans (2) (prague) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday, before I ventured any farther into my current writing endeavor and learning the basics of Scrivener, I finally gave up and decided to organize my MacBook’s desktop, in one big effort to clean up the clutter that has gradually gown and grown.

And so I spent more time than I would have liked opening folders and files and deciding exactly where they belonged—somewhere useful or in the Trash.

 I’m always leery about sending any kind of file to the Trash, because it always seems that as soon as that occurs, it was exactly what I needed all along. Of course, there are many safeguards that a wise user knows in regards to handling items in the Trash.

One’s file is still there until “Empty Trash” is selected. But, for the most part, I got rid of things I know are not important and are merely taking up space on my desktop. And I was even diligent enough to move things into appropriate folders, consolidating many duplicate folders into one. Plus, the desktop’s appearance is now neat and tidy, folders and other items organized according to their labels.

And as always seems to happen, I got caught up reading and taking a trip down memory lane upon reading several of the files I came across. Regardless, the tidying up needed doing, so I postponed any further work in my endeavor to learn Scrivener and played housemaid!

In the course of all that, I came across a few other notes and reminders I’d created for future consideration in some blog post that, at the time, seemed just too good to be forgotten. For example, I’m always alert to words and terms that I’ve grown weary of hearing or seeing in print. They could be words that are misused, overused, or simply mispronounced.

So I list them here since I’m on a roll and really don’t feel like shuffling them to the “back burner” again, where they’ll be out of sight, out of mind once more.

I really cringe whenever I ask someone how they are and what’s new, and they respond with “Same old, same old…” This tells me absolutely nothing, other than that the person is not too enthralled with talking to me and bringing me up to date about things since we last conversed.

I’ve also tired of the expression “more bang for your buck,” something that falls completely short of making total sense. I know what is meant by it, but it has become trite, hackneyed, and rather limp in my estimation. I never fail to associate the term with deer hunting—for obvious reasons!

And not long ago, I overheard the following mispronunciations: “supposebly” and “probaly.” It’s one thing for junior high students to butcher their pronunciations of words such as these, but it’s quite another for grown, supposedly educated, adults to continually speak them incorrectly. I just breathe deeply and move on.

022-Language Format (Photo credit: gingerpig2000)

Other than that, life around here is simply same old, same old! Until next time, I’ll leave it at that…MLA