Can You Just…
Posted by Paolo on 2.21.23 in Random
There’s a word that antagonises me, probably more than it should and that is the word “just”. I hear it in different contexts, but each time it makes me think that the person using it is making light of the request they are making. At work I hear “Paolo, couldn’t we just do this?”, in coffee shops I hear “can I just have a flat white?”. Is it just me? Am I overreacting? When someone says that to me at work I get the impression they don’t appreciate what they are asking me to do. If I offer someone a coffee and they say “I’ll just have a latte”, it makes me think that they are undermining the gesture. I know it’s probably a force of habit and I certainly don’t hold it against people or anything, but I do wonder if it is a repercussion of something more significant, something cultural perhaps. Anyway, I didn’t mean to start off the year with this type of post, but my many attempts at keeping a blog have often failed because I have been worried about what to put out there and this has resulted in me writing a few posts, deleting everything and starting again. So here we go again. It’s 2023 and I’m currently nursing a ruptured achilles, sitting in the John Lewis café in Reading sat a short distance away from a mother and baby reunion and hearing the desperate cry of babies, the clinking of cups and cutlery and a hum of conversation and I’ve got to be honest, it feels quite nice. After spending so long working from home and then being confined to doing so for the last month due to my injury, I felt like going for a wonder in town and I’m pleased I did. My foot is feeling quite swollen now though so I think it’s probably best if I catch the bus home.