10.8.2026 – does this bother you?

does this bother you?
desperate need of mending?
feel need to fix it?

Based on the article, Experts Agree: Nobody Knows What ‘Bimonthly’ or ‘Biweekly’ Means By Nitsuh Abebe in the New York Times Magazine where Mt. Abebe writes:

There are also usage guides for “biweekly” and “bimonthly,” but most of their advice just face-plants right back into uncertainty. Merriam-Webster suggests using “semimonthly” for “twice a month,” which doesn’t much clarify “bimonthly” unless people know you’re doing it. An English professor named Michael Adams told CBS News that we should bring back “fortnight,” the old shortening of “14 nights,” so that we “don’t have to worry about ‘biweekly’ or ‘bimonthly’ meaning two things.” But two weeks and half a month are not the same: A semimonthly paycheck arrives 24 times per year, a fortnightly one 26. Every “biweekly” or “bimonthly” explainer seems to arrive at the same drastic conclusion: Abandon these words. They are hopelessly compromised. Just say “twice a month” or “every other month” or whatever.

The trouble is that deciding what is “correct” does not really resolve ambiguity. There is, for instance, solid agreement that bi- will for some reason affect “annual” in the opposite way it affects “monthly,” giving us “biannual” (twice a year) and “biennial” (every two years). This does not remotely stop people from confusing the two: Clarity solves nothing.

My question is: Does this bother you? Does it feel like a tiny piece of linguistic machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending? Do you feel a need to fix it?

I enjoyed reading the article very much as it was focused on words.

But that last quote.

Does this bother you?

Does it feel like a tiny piece of machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending?

Do you feel a need to fix it?

I really need to ask these questions of just about everything today.

Because …

So many things bother me.

So many tiny pieces of machinery have snapped off and are clanking around in desperate need of mending?

I feel a need to fix these things.

And I don’t want things to bother me.

I don’t want feel anything is in desperate need of mending.

I don’t want to fix anything.

Just let me go to the beach and I am good.

Maybe in a fortnight or so I will be ready to get back into letting things bother me.