an affinity for words
The thesaurus is my friend. Using the same word repeatedly is something I try to avoid and so the thesaurus comes in handy often. Nonetheless, apparently I use the word like a lot - the word cloud I generated in Wordle* proves it.
(I actually use the word like even more when speaking, a remnant of my teenage years when 'like' was incorporated into virtually every sentence. For example, "he is, like, so cute" or "she, like, said that she would call me later". I didn't have a Valley Girl accent, so it could've been worse. Apparently, the use of like by teenagers has been researched and published. Go figure.)
From now on, I'll be conscious of using that word, at least in the context of my blog, and will try to use synonyms to mix it up a bit more. Possibilities, according to the thesaurus of course, include: appreciate, cherish, derive pleasure from, dig, fancy, find appealing, get a kick out of, hold dear, relish.
* Comments is quite prominent in my word cloud because I copied and pasted all the contents of the blog, including headers and links (such as the one inviting readers to comment). I did this instead of referring Wordle directly to my blog when I discovered that doing so only resulted the first page of blog entries being considered by the word cloud generator.
