Since talking about fillers in class, I have been quite self conscious about my personal use of them. After class that day I kept a running tally of my "likes", "sortas" "kindas" and "whatevers". The grand total of tallies was well over 50, but my tallies got pretty sloppy towards the end, so I'm not sure of the exact number.
Suffice to say, I use a lot of fillers.
But the thing is, I didn't realize the extent to which fillers rule my sentences. Like everyone else, I thought I only used them sometimes. But once I started paying attention, I noticed little ones, sneaky ones, tricky little fillers that I would have missed if I wasn't paying attention. So I even counted the ones that I caught before even saying them.
Beyond just the pain of knowing that I am such a rampant abuser of fillers in sentences, I also started to feel very foolish every time I caught myself using a filler. And then when I started feeling like a moron, I started thinking about that and would lose my train of thought from what I was previously talking about.
"Yeah, and like... um, li- oh um... sorry, what was I saying?"
Yeah, it was that bad.
After looking at the tallies I reflected on my day. I came to the conclusion that I was not even sure why using fillers made me so uncomfortable. I knew that the reason I used fillers was because of society, so why was that same society now telling me to stop?
It was all very confusing. And frustrating.
Basically, I figured it was a better idea to just ignore my usage of fillers and try to subconsciously stop using them, because purposely thinking about them will drive me absolutely nuts.
So to close, I was wondering how many times on average do you think you use fillers each day? ESTIMATE, please do not count them for real unless you're genuinely interested. It's awful. I can't stop thinking about them now. But anyway, please add with any comment, the number of times a day you think you use fillers.
Whenever I was younger my friends counted how many times I said "like" to them in a day without me knowing. Needless to say you shouldn't feel ashamed of 50, I found out that I was well over 100. But you are right, I never ever even think about the fact that I do it, but when someone mentions it to you it drives you completely insane! Part of me wants to say it doesn't even matter anymore if you use fillers or not because most of society does it and most don't even notice when others do. Then again, my mother always tells me to practice not saying them because when it comes down to things such as business interviews it doesn't sound very professional if you say "like" every other sentence. I think that this is a good point, but I would hope they don't base whether or not they hire you on this! Most people would never get jobs!
ReplyDeleteI don't even want to think about how often I use fillers like "um" or "like"...I'm sure it would be an insanely high number. I'm even catching myself using them in my head right now!It is probably for the best that I ignore my filler usage so that I don't drive myself nuts. I think this was a great topic to write about since everyone and their mother uses these fillers. Its kinda fun to think about.
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