WRITING CHALLENGES

5 Phrases I Love — and 5 Phrases I Love to Hate

The tricky bit was narrowing it down to five

Image by Anita S. from Pixabay manipulated in Canva by the author.

Just a few hours before 2022 ticked over into 2023, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, tagged me into another of these Writing Challenges, which periodically fill up our Medium feed.

Since then — predictably — we’ve seen plenty more people diving in. Only today, I stumbled across Klara Jane Holloway and Lucy Socha and their excellent input into this meme.

So, I figured, why the hell NOT join in…

Firstly, I’ll share FIVE phrases I apparently overuse to the point where people who know me will literally tick them off a list. Then FIVE phrases that make ME cringe when I hear them.

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

Here we go…

Five Phrases I Overuse

• “It is what it is….”

Apparently, I was known in my churches for (over) using this phrase in meetings. I think it springs from the frustration at people using phrases like “It wasn’t like this in my day” or “Things never used to be like this” to avoid facing reality.