June 11: #12 Learn a new word and use it in a conversation or social media post

Phil: Today’s word of the day, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, was calaboose, which means jail, apparently. (Especially a local jail, as Bruce pointed out…) I spent the day contemplating the calaboose, being the calaboose, avoiding the calaboose, being one with the calaboose. I started to think how funny it is that all these years, the dictionary has been running this word of the day thing, and I never once thought to partake. What a missed opportunity. Just a simple Google every day can expand the weird words you know, kind of like calaboose. Did I say calaboose enough in this entry? Calaboose.

Bruce: I try to do this challenge many days of each week, as a writer and just as a person I feel that vocabulary is so important. Communication is so much of life, empathy and interrelations and attempting to comprehend and articulate the nuances of our human experience. I have a word of the day calendar (my parents have been buying me one every year for the past 4 years.) While I was finishing a great book that I’ve been reading “The Explorers Guild volume 1 Passage To Shambala” I came across a word I needed brushing up on, “Proselytize” which I then looked up and wrote down (as I always do in this situation). Proselytize is a verb that means to convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another. Or to promote or advocate a belief of course of action. I kept checking to be sure how to use it and pronounce it and finding reasons or places to use it, and it was a good feeling to have a new way to express ideas.

Tomorrow's challenge: #22 Meditate 10 minutes or more