hearts

You know how sometimes you get fixated on a word or phrase and just keep dropping it into conversation over and over? But then it's hard to tell if you're really overusing the phrase, or if it's just that you've noticed it so now it's growing in volume and you imagine everyone around you is going mental and imagining the supreme satisfaction of slapping the words right out of your repetitive face.

Well, my little niggling catchphrase of late, has been 'how do you feel?' It seems to me i'm asking that of everyone these days. Not just sick people, but colleagues explaining their workload to me, bosses telling me about objectives and work plans, boyfriends and friends telling me about their work days.

I suspect it was brought on by a friend who is having to work through her hard time, so when i ask how her day was, it's not good enough anymore to hear about the lost files or endless meetings because that happens anyway. The important thing is the sub-text of how the lost phone number reminded her of someone else, and the whole working day is coloured in this thick sludge.

Maybe i've gotten so used to it that now i feel compelled, not just to give my boss's emails a cursory glance, but to ask them 'How does your priority list make you feel?' Your excel spreadsheet isn't doing what you want it to? How do you feel about that?

I wonder if all these people are secretly happy to be asked, so they can just whoosh let a little of the air out. And this is like the secret magic phrase for unwinding them, unravelling them, picking out the knots.

Or maybe they're all thinking shut the %$£** up, you touchy-feely rubbernecking bloodsucker.
Gosh. What a lot of pent up hostility.