Boyfriend D.J. is 49 years old. He’s a successful lawyer with four area offices. He cycles more than 200 miles a week and volunteers time for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

He is most definitely a full-grown man.

And sometimes I call him the most ridiculous of frat-boy nicknames.

Dude.

I call D.J. and others “dude” out of a lazy habit, a contagion born of a relationship with a younger man. My Philadelphia ex-boyfriend, 7 years my junior, called me “dude” the first week he met me. His nickname made me stop mid-sentence.

“Did you just call me ‘dude’?” I asked.

“I call everybody ‘dude.’ I call my mother ‘dude,’” he said.

(He also loudly and theatrically passed gas for me that first week, thinking I’d find it humorous and him charming. I did not.)

Embarrassingly, I still use the word. As I said, it’s because I’m too lazy to think of other words, and I’ve settled into a comfortable habit.

I’m the same way with my writing sometimes, but I’m trying to improve. Here are five horribly lazy habits I have seen in marketing copy I’ve written for clients:

• X Company is the leading provider of Y services
• X product is your best solution
• X service is a one-stop resource
• Anything with the word maximize
• X Company is the place/the answer/the solution

The problem with these words is that they no longer mean anything. Every company has become the leading provider. Every writer promises that you can use a product or service to maximize. We’ve seen these things so much that we no longer pay attention. They have become space holders on a page.

I frequently run across conversations about word choices that copywriters should avoid and techniques for improving your copy. Here are a handful…

A copywriter’s rant: Marketing with cheesy cliches and lazy words

Why jargon feeds on lazy minds

How to lose 30 pounds of word flab overnight

The two most important words in blogging

The Cliche Finder and The Political Cliche Site (just for fun)

PS — the graphic is one of my all-time favorite poems from one of my all-time favorite poets, Shel Silverstein.

A few weeks ago I decided to spend mental energy on other projects and to reduce my blog posts. But frankly I just can’t muster much creativity. One of the closest people to me in the world has cancer, and she’s not going to get better. I can’t yet figure out how to handle that news and the new reality.

So, I’m putting myself back into a box and cruising on autopilot for a while. This means I’m back to daily blog posts, or at least an attempt at them, because I’ve got a writing habit but not a drive to reach beyond what I’m used to.

This means I’ll work with my present client base and not spend much time trying to find new clients.

This means I’m running every day, but without the drive to run faster or set new records.

This means that I’m eating the same oatmeal for breakfast every day, listening to my old library of songs, sleeping soundly in my own bed most nights and keeping a low profile with friends and family. I might even go back to my cupcake habit.

This means I’m firmly tucked into my safe little box, and I’ll come out when my inner thoughts aren’t screaming as loudly.

As a small business owner, I think this is a perfectly reasonable way to deal with a crisis without coming to a complete halt. I’m removing extraneous variables so I can concentrate on two things: making a basic living and keeping myself sane. When the news first hit, I initially shifted into neutral. For three weeks, I billed less than four hours of work a week — I need to bill three to four a day, five days a week, to make a nice living. I’m going to suffer greatly for my lack of productivity in the immediate future. I have to get back to work, but I don’t have to go full force for a while.

I just sent out my newsletter to 2000 of my best contacts…. complete with the word “Newlsetters.”

What the hell is a newlsetter, you ask?

Is it related to an Irish Setter?

A typesetter?

A jetsetter?

Nope — “newl” is a term used by ancient Egyptians. Newls were small nail-like objects that helped line up the corners of the pyramids.

Do you buy that? Sigh. I bet my 2000 readers won’t either.

Damn typos.

I think I’m not going to look at any more of the newsletter. In fact, I think I’m going to go for a run.

Another trait to overcome: trying to always be a “good girl.”

Every month, I help an association chairperson write her column for the association newsletter. I used to coordinate the whole newsletter, but I talked the group into restructuring their process, which effectively left me out of the loop.  But the chairperson loved how I helped her write her column, so they asked me to continue, even though I tried to quit back then.

Today I wrote to them to resign, truthfully admitting that I felt too far out of their editorial loop to thoughtfully guide the columns. They paid me for one hour’s work a month, and I’m sure it took at least two hours of coordinating, shuffling, writing and billing. In other words, it wasn’t a project that was making me any money, and I didn’t feel like I was doing my best job.

But… I didn’t want to make them feel bad. I didn’t want to let them down. So I just spent MORE than an hour composing an email that was actually more words than the monthly column, justifying and explaining myself and trying to convince them that it was the right thing to do.

Is it my Southern roots? The fact that my mother’s family was Catholic? A woman’s drive to always be liked? My desire to please people and always be a hero?

Beats me, but I’m pretty sure many of the male entrepreneurs I know don’t have this problem. One of my entrepreneurial mentors wants to fire his receptionist. He’s waiting until the new office person is trained enough to take over. How can he act normally to his receptionist? The guilt would kill me! I’d have sincere talks with her and try to improve her performance. I know I’d cry when I finally realized that it wouldn’t work.

Sometimes I try to put myself in my clients’ shoes. Do I really think that this group will sit around and brood about my leaving? Logically, here’s how I think they will look at this in a couple of months. “Yeah, we used to work with this one copywriter, but she eventually faded out of the picture.” I don’t think they’ll remember me like this: “We had the most perfect writer in the universe, and one day she up and wrote us off, and we’ll never recover.”

So, I should move on. I just got back from travels to and fro. I have plenty of catching up to do. And now I’ve crossed one of my lingering to dos off my list.

PS — I’m glad to be back on the blog. A couple of people wrote to say they missed my Tuesday post this morning.