FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

nolife (noh life) noun, masculine

 A nolife is a person who devotes a very big part (if not an exclusive part) of his/her time to practicing his/her passion (or work) to the detriment of other activities.

Un nolife est une personne qui consacre une très grande part (si ce n'est l'exclusivité) de son temps à pratiquer sa passion, voire son travail, au détriment d'autres activités. (from French Wikipedia)

There is a new term getting quite a lot of tongue time here in France lately. I hear it spoken by the twenty-somethings and French teens. I heard Alexi say it, when I asked him if he was on one of the social networks. (Je ne suis pas un nolife, he informed me.) And I sometimes hear my children say it, when greeting me in my office at the start of their day: salut Nolife, say they.

So what better word to celebrate the 1000th post here at French Word-A-Day?: "nolife"

Au contraire!: to live one's passion is to be a yeslife! For passion fuels creativity, and to create is to be en vie. (By the way "envie"—not to be confused with "en vie"—kills life... the envious are the original no-lifers. I will remember this the next time jealousy strikes, as it does never mind how hard I try.)

As for this "nolife" writing life: 1000 posts, five self-published books, one house-published book, a handful of unfinished manuscripts, a pile of diaries dating back to 1980... and odd bits written on napkins, on envelopes, on the backs of receipts, in letters, or on skin beneath rolled up sleeves...  how to justify this as a life? 

More than one writer has made the following observation: to write is to experience life twice. I'd say that's "new life" rather than "no life". 

We leave off with a quote from Anais Nin

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

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