Welcome to “Off the Clock,” a little something that lands somewhere between Timeless & Timely.
I send out this fun look at language and words every other Saturday as bonus content. If someone sent this to you, please consider subscribing.
If Timeless & Timely is where we wrestle with leadership, culture, and conscience, Off the Clock is where we loosen the tie, wander into the stacks, and remind ourselves that the words we use contain multitudes.
In 2025, these fortnightly excursions formed something of a map: not linear, not orderly, but revealing. Taken together, the year’s entries show how language carries memory, mischief, power, and occasionally, outright nonsense.
What follows is a look back at the year, not chronologically, but thematically — because words, like people, prefer to travel in company.
I. The Playful Anarchy of Language
Several entries delighted in language misbehaving — refusing symmetry, order, or logic.
These pieces explored linguistic asymmetry: plurals that won’t singularize, pairs that refuse reversal, words that carry opposite meanings depending on context. Together, they form a quiet rebuke to anyone who insists language should be tidy.
English, we’re reminded, is not a system so much as a long-running argument.
II. Punctuation, Grammar, and the Cult of Correctness
A smaller but sharper cluster examined our obsession with mechanical precision:
These essays weren’t anti-grammar; they were anti-sanctimony. They asked a simple question: when does correctness stop serving clarity and start serving ego? The answer, it turns out, is somewhere around the third unnecessary semicolon.
III. Lists, Curiosities, and Lexical Cabinetry
Some entries leaned into the joy of collection:
These were acts of preservation and play — proof that not everything needs to be useful to be worth keeping. In an economy obsessed with optimization, this may have been the most quietly subversive theme of the year.
IV. Power, Persuasion, and the Language of Authority
Several essays traced the role of words in the acquisition and even the abuse of power:
Here, language wasn’t whimsical; it was strategic. These pieces examined how authority hides in accents, how persuasion dresses itself as expertise, and how naming can be an act of both clarity and deception.
The lesson was implicit but unmistakable: pay attention to who gets to name things, and why.
V. Literature, Rhetoric, and Verbal Craft
A number of entries returned us to the pleasures of well-made language:
These were celebrations of rhetoric — not as ornament, but as force. From Shakespeare’s inventive invective to the muscular beauty of carefully constructed prose, the message was clear: words matter not just for what they say, but for how they sound and strike.
VI. History, Memory, and the Calendar
Finally, a handful of essays anchored language in time and tradition:
These pieces treated words as artifacts — carriers of collective memory, ritual, and seasonal meaning. They reminded us that language doesn’t just describe history; it participates in it.
What the Year Revealed
Taken together, Off the Clock in 2025 suggested a few enduring truths: that language resists control, finding a home in our eyes, ears, and mouths; that authority often hides in carefully scripted places; and that play is not the opposite of seriousness, but helps us identify what we should take seriously.
Mostly, though, the year affirmed the value of slowing down long enough to notice the words we use every day, and the ones we’ve forgotten, misused, or taken for granted.
As the clock ticks forward, these essays remain what they were intended to be: small invitations to curiosity, tucked into the margins of your busy world.
And if you found yourself pausing, smiling, or thinking, “I never noticed that before,” then Off the Clock did its job.
Let me know which was a personal favorite of yours in the comments section.
Until next year…
There’s so much to learn,
