I recently watched a new episode of Last Tango In Halifax which is a British TV show about two retirees who were in love in their youth meeting again and getting married. I have to say I am watching much more British TV now than ever before. Endevour is probably my favorite. But, that’s another post…

Anyway, on that show, one of the retirees mentioned that a young boy that he was trying to help was a collector of words. I had never heard that phrase before and since being a wordsmith the phrase it immediately attached itself to a permanent part of my brain. 🤓

It brought back the discussion between Polonius and Hamlet as shown here. Since I have already shown so much of myself here I will come out and say that I was probably one of the few high school kids who actually enjoyed reading Shakespeare in my high school English classes. Most of the kids complained that someone needs to put out an interpretation of his plays so that they are more meaningful. But, to me, the Old English words of Shakespeare are what makes his plays so incredible. I suspect he labored over every sentence to make sure each word was the perfect one for that particular dialogue.

I have mentioned several times before that I too labor over all the words in my blogs. Each post usually goes through at least a half dozen audits to make sure I have chosen the most appropriate word for the circumstance. But sometimes, I admit that some of my posts are rather hurried and reading them later I am embarrassed that they were written so poorly. 😖 In fact, many times I will then go and do another edit even though it is pretty unlikely that anyone will ever read them the second time. I hope I never get famous (fat chance of that!!) because I am just not good at impromptu conversations such as unscripted interviews. While I pride myself on the written word I am a terrible public speaker. What I write can always be edited a few times before people are exposed to it. Another reason is that my brain is a terrible censor. I usually blurt out whatever I am thinking without considering if it that is appropriate. I blame my Aspie traits for that.

I am a collector of words

Since I have been deaf for more than 30 years now a very large part of each day is spent with viewing words. A few months ago I figured out (for whatever reason, I have no idea) That I have written about thirty novels worth of words on my various blogs. That puts me ahead of John Grisham for word count, but definitely not by $/word. 🤪 Another way to put it is that I have written the equivalent of four Bibles. Yep, I am definitely a collector of words… and proud of that fact.