This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
6:33pm
I’m feeling none of the motivation to write tonight. There are no stories. Nothing interesting happened. Nothing not-interesting happened. The National Day calendar is not helping and I’m too tired to learn anything new.
After weeks of cruising along with a little of this and that and the other thing, tonight I am feeling rather meh.
The only thing to do when you’re feeling meh is to tell someone about it. Then that Someone can console you and tell you that you don’t really have to blog anyway. Then you can tell that Someone how you’ve committed to writing every day for a year and it’s halfway through October so you’re not quitting now. And that Someone will reassure you that taking a break is fine and you can still keep your streak even if you don’t actually publish anything in a day or two or four.
Which is exactly how the conversation went with my brother Kevin when I texted him about the meh.
The thing about Kevin and me is that we are very good at making Something out of Nothing. We take a lot of Nothing and before you know it we’ve written entire books about it. Or at least we come up with titles for books. Quite often during one of our Nothings, one of us will interject with the statement: that should be a book title.
We have come up with so many ideas but sadly I had not thought to document them until recently when I captured key titles like Pick The Kangaroo and Sandwich With A Side Of Sandwich. Maybe one day I will tell you about all the books we’re going to write and that can be a blog, too.
Sometimes being meh pays off.
Somewhere during the course of the conversation I decided that writing about meh was a distinct possibility. Kevin concurred that it is a Most Excellent And Useful word.
It can describe a lot of things, for instance, if someone asks you if you want broccoli with your chicken, you can say meh, which means broccoli is fine but also kind of boring and I’m not in the mood for it right now because I really want a biscuit.
If it’s a Tuesday, say, and you’re deciding whether to keep working on server stuff or go have a glass of rye instead, you could look at your computer screen and say meh, which means I’ve had enough of this rubbish and it will still be there tomorrow so I’m going to have a drink.
Meh can mean I don’t want to, or I’m not loving this right now. It can mean I’m bored or things are feeling a bit blah. Meh can be the thing you say when someone says something dumb but you don’t really want to get into it so you meh them and hope they take the hint. Meh can mean whatevs, dude. Or I don’t care so go away and let me play with my colored pencils.
You can start out a blogging project strong then slide into meh-ness.
Or be surrounded my so much mehness that it’s really quite stunning you don’t faint from the ennui of it all.
Kevin and I decided that meh is the modern day Smurf. Back in the day you could go to the Smurf for dinner, or take your Smurf if you had a cold. You could put your Smurf in the Smurf and if you were feeling particularly smurfy you could Let Them Eat Smurf. Quite useful, really.
In the end this turned out fine. Sometimes you really are allowed to be meh and not do anything about it. Eventually it will float away and something else will take its place in your brain cells.
We’ll see what that is tomorrow.
Photo: to help the meh move along I bought myself some colorful gourds and a mini pumpkin with the coolest stem ever.