Why the Word ‘Fine’ Sucks

When was the last time you said it and really meant it?

Raegan Hedley (Reggie)
5 min readJan 7, 2022
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

I’ll never forget a particular conversation that involved the word fine because it was such a trainwreck on my part. I was doing free labour for food and board (through Workaway) at a bed and breakfast, and the person who owned it commented that I seemed off. My reply started with some complete bullshit, mentioned something about not sleeping enough, and closed with, but I’ll be fine!

After a beat, he said something along the lines of, “ok just thought I’d ask,” and walked away.

I was not fine.

Looking back, I wanted to say I’m unhappy about the sheer volume of unpaid emotional and physical labour I’m doing. I’m also WILDLY anxious about not knowing what I’m doing next, so yeah, I’m a little on eDgE!!!!

Instead of speaking some semblance of the truth, I used the word fine. And it got me nowhere.

‘Fine’ can carry some heavy subtext

This is my experience and opinion of the word fine, but something tells me it isn’t just me that feels this way. Maybe you use the word fine because you are absolutely not fine. Maybe you don’t know how you’re doing, so you use fine as a default or when you don’t want to get into it.

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Raegan Hedley (Reggie)

Professional copywriter. Former party girl. Never met a swear word I didn’t like or a piece of plastic I didn’t hate.