Besides the procedural minutiae of one book that I happen to have written, what am I getting at in the present article? A good and fair question! My suggestion is as follows.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what an "indexing" of your own speech on a daily basis would reveal about you? What words and ideas do you mention in your speech on a daily basis that would end up being so frequent as to be passim? What other words are only mentioned occasionally by you, but have a gravity and importance to them that cannot be ignored or downplayed when they are spoken aloud? Are some of your passim words far more important to you, but might be losing some of their punch because they are mentioned so frequently?
Would this kind of indexing look different if it were a workday for you as opposed to a day off? Would this type of indexing's results depend on who you're around, or what your activities of the day end up entailing? Would the "chapters" of your life in which you're at a big pagan gathering feature certain words more frequently, as opposed to the days in your life that are more "mundane" and not inclusive of specific spiritual events? Would this indexing vary more if it involved a tabulation of the words of your thoughts as opposed to the words of your speech? And if there are large patterns discernible within each of these possibilities, and they are patterns that you find unexpected, uncomfortable, or upsetting, what can you do to change them and bring them more into line with what you would hope they would be rather than what they are at present?
Here's another suggestion that you might consider looking into: check the various blogs that you read on a regular basis (including the Patheos.com Pagan Portal!) and see what words are largest in the "word cloud" that is often included, whether these particular words are words in blog entries, or are the tags that the author places on those entries. I've certainly used the tags on my own blog in a manner more like indexing than is probably recommended...and yet, it tells one a great deal about what topics are the most frequent ones I mention at a quick glance!
But that specific result is accurate for my online writing life, not my daily speech; when I mention Antinous' name aloud, it is rarely in a manner that can be considered passim. He is in my thoughts constantly, and even in my sight a good portion of each day, but his name only passes my lips infrequently. While nearly every blog post I write mentions his name at least once, I can count on one hand the number of conversations I've had which have included him in the last three weeks, with whom I had them, and what the occasion and overall thrust of them was. It is that important to me to know this; his name—and, indeed, the names of all the gods—are not to be spoken flippantly or uselessly.
Since I am a devotee of several different deities who are concerned with language and words, keeping track of the words I use, both in thought but also (and far more importantly) in verbal speech and public writing, is not only advisable but—in my view—essential. If words really do have power and magic within them, which I would argue that they do, then our judicious use of them should be the order of the day, and not something only reserved for ritual occasions or situations of "greater significance," because every moment in life is potentially a significant one.
I have sometimes heard people say "the devil is in the details," and I've always found this to be a very problematic statement, no matter what religious viewpoint one happens to have. For me, the gods are in the details, not only with words, but with everything. Those who are devoted to the gods and committed to honoring them in as many ways as possible should, I think, have an approach that is aware of how gods-filled our everyday experiences can be.
Will doing something like this make the story of your life, the book of your daily deeds upon the earth, more interesting? Perhaps not; but, that book is nowhere near complete yet, and there's nothing to say that based on what has been indexed thus far, you can't make the rest of the story far more interesting, and useful as well as usable, when you look back upon it when the current chapter, and future chapters, have been completed and are imprinted on the fabric of the cosmos.
(We'll leave figuring out how to sell more copies of the book of your life to potential buyers, and whether e-publishing it is a good idea, for another time!)
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