The Power of “Ish”

It slips into conversation without ceremony. Six-ish, we say, or blue-ish, or done-ish, and with that single syllable, we soften the word. Ish is a quiet rebellion against precision – not as an escape, but as a gesture of truth told in layers. It leaves space. It breathes. It understands the world rarely fits clean lines.

I’ve long been drawn to ish, perhapds before I even noticed it. It was always there, padding around the edges of certaintly like a fox in twilight, saying: not quite, but close. it isn’t a cop-out. It isn’t indecision. It’s something gentler, something liminal. The shimmering place where something mostly fits, but not entirely. A way of honouring what almost is, without forcing it to become what it is not.

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When Conversations Stop Being Conversations

We don’t always know how our words land – especially online.

In digital spaces, we write quickly. We reply while distracted. We skim, we type, we send. Along the way, we make assumptions about tone and forget the context that shaped what was said. We read more into a pause than a paragraph. And somewhere in all of that, something vital is often lost; not just the intended meaning, but its meaningfulness – the sense that what we offered truly mattered to someone else.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the quiet ache that follows a certain kind of reply. The kind that begins with, “Yes, but..”

Yes, but I see it differently.
Yes, but that's not quite right.
Yes, but here's what really matters.

At first glance, it looks like engagement. Perhaps it even is, in the most techincal sense. Someone has responded, the conversation continues. But the energy shifts. What once felt like a shared exploration becomes a subtle contest. The offering I made is no longer being received or built upon, but is being reframed or replaced.

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