WOTD

Stuff sticks in my head. I can't help it, and I can't stop it. If I hear a song lyric, maybe not even a good song lyric that has some kind of unique refrain, or elicits some kind of emotional response, or brings back a memory - Boom I'm stuck with it all day.

I also often find myself using the same word repeatedly in any given day. Not the usual suspects like - well "like," and - well "and" or "um:" No, I'm talking about words out of the ordinary, words like retrospect, words that carry a jolt because you don't know where they are coming from.

For a long time all I could do is say harrumph and go with the flow instead of being hell-bent on finding some magical way to clear my head, I just tried to make progress each day toward finding a way to deal with the things that were stuck in my head.

Through some kind of happenstance I seemed to have stumbled upon a solution.

Ladies and Gentlemen, especially those of you in my Twitter and Facebook communities I give you WOTD, the big Wahtahdah, (correct pronunciation), or more simply Word Of The Day, and what I call, well I don't have a name for my "song lyric thing." Maybe by the end of this post... Or I'll take suggestions via comments.

*Note those words in bold above were the first few words of the day.

One day, not long after I started using Twitter the word retrospect was stuck in my head. Every other sentence it seemed I was using the word. So, I tweeted that retrospect was apparently the word of the day. In retrospect, I had no idea WOTD would take off like it has. Later that same day, someone asked me if I had a word for the next day. The day after that someone tweeted, "Hey Jim word up. What's the word of the day?" Finally, someone shortened the terminology to WOTD, and it has become a regular thing.

Throughout the day, folks try to use WOTD at least once in a sentence, and then everybody gives them a shout out.

The song lyrics get thrown up as tweets as well, although not as often. Sometimes there are fun results. The day I put up "But not a real green dress that's cruel," almost the whole song was "sung" through comments by the end of the day. Unfortunately, we still don't have a million dollars.

Today, I had a Facebook conversation about the movie The Blues Brothers spurred by the line - Folks here's a story 'bout Minnie the Moocher.

But the regular head clearer if you will, the thing I seem to have become known for is WOTD.

Now, I get that I'm not the only one out there with WOTD. I would venture to guess however that I may be the only one out there with WOTD produced purely through happenstance, and not generated by an automated WOTD generator.

Of course, I don't always use a word from my head. (It doesn't happen every day.) Sometimes I ask for help from my Twitter and Facebook community, and sometimes they change the word on me if they don't like the one I got stuck on originally. No matter - it's all still fun.

Sometimes we don't even use real words. We use creative words like harrumph, wonky, or crap-nasty.

Occasionally we have a word for the weekend. A few times someone has spotted me using a word repeatedly or in a slightly different context and called WOTD for me.

One time we did use a generated word, but I didn't know it until after the fact.

Finally, we have on at least one occasion put WOTD to a vote. It was a monumental day.

We don't force a word every day. Sometimes we're all just too busy to worry about WOTD. Sometimes we're just plain focused on something else. For example there weren't too many WOTD's during the last week or so of Learn and Play @ CML.

I have added a WOTD roll to the blog. I retraced my tweets and found them all, (47) I think. I made notes about the stories behind each word so we can talk more about WOTD in the future.

Tell me what words you remember, what stories about WOTD stick with you - and then

Suggest a word if you'd like. It's bound to get stuck in my head sooner or later.

A B C, Its easy as 1 2 3