Kent

V is for Vicarious

Vicarious means "second-hand", as in "vicarious enjoyment" -- the enjoyment you feel when someone tells you of an event. It seems like our culture is moving more and more towards vicariously enjoying things. For many sport watchers, the only sport they participate in is lager curls, while others enjoy watching celebreties and live their lives vicariously that way. Many would say that people should stop this, but I tend to disagree. I'm perfectly happy to see someone I like succeed, it doesn't diminish any success I may have. I think that our industry feels too competitive at times.

Today's Exercise: Publicly promote someone else at work. Vicariously enjoy their success.

Addendum to yesterday

I was reminded today of one of my pet peeves -- the use of 'utilize' It drives me up a wall when I hear people use it. So, a bit o' searching (just to make certain I wasn't overly wrong), and I found this (boldface mine):

Usage Note: A number of critics have remarked that utilize is an unnecessary substitute for use. It is true that many occurrences of utilize could be replaced by use with no loss to anything but pretentiousness, for example, in sentences such as They utilized questionable methods in their analysis or We hope that many commuters will continue to utilize mass transit after the bridge has reopened. But utilize can mean “to find a profitable or practical use for.” Thus the sentence The teachers were unable to use the new computers might mean only that the teachers were unable to operate the computers, whereas The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers suggests that the teachers could not find ways to employ the computers in instruction.