Me on Handwriting

Everything is done with technology these days.  Notes are taken in classrooms with laptops, tablets, or phones with your fingers on keys or a recording app listening to the words you used to write down.  Board meeting members use legal pads for coasters or mouse-pads.  Pencils stay in the classroom or collect dust on your desk.

Boy do I miss having to WRITE STUFF all the time.

My handwriting has always not been pretty.  The legibility of my handwriting already sucked through school as if I inherited my scribbling practices biologically.  Practicing cursive any chance I could (my signature on my library card at age 8 was in cursive with as many hearts as I could fit in) turned into a stint with calligraphy (even purchased a full set of pens in different styles and sizes to practice writing letters over and over again) yet my natural handwriting stayed at about the same mediocre quality.  Journaling through my middle school years wasn't just a way to vent out moments of my day but also practice cursive one day and my natural script on another to mix things up.  I took any and all notes I could just to practice writing out more words.  Lists were constantly scratched out on notepads like daily to-do's and grocery store lists.  So why am I still not satisfied by the scribble that comes out of my hands?

As a slave to technology (my livelihood and salary depend on it), it's no wonder my handwriting has gone down hill even since the mediocre level my handwriting was at previously.  Computers, tablets, and phones go along with our fast-paced 21st century reality.  Our need for speed is warped when you're always typing and rarely writing.  The other day I was in a meeting taking notes the "old school" legal-pad-and-pencil way.  It's been over two years since I took notes like this (the last being... school), so I furiously wrote down everything I could. I tried to get my hand to write as fast as my mind was processing it... which is usually my much-faster typing speed... which resulted in barely legible scribbles I had to rewrite afterwards... which just wasted my time and caused some hand cramping.  This just makes me want to toss a computer out of a window and do a job all in paper... design something through pens and pencils and not a mouse... scribble out words to toss across the table instead of emailing... all of that.

It must be the budding-writer in me that wants to get her hands on a honest-to-goodness typewriter and peck out a story, but since I can't erase anything typed I'd end up scribbling what I want and waste a ton of ink and paper.  But this is beside the point...

I'm only rambling about all this because I want to keep practicing and get back into journaling even - and needed to tell somebody about it.  (Thanks for listening, Internet.)  Those SPOTD posts just may be a starting point offline, but oh do I EVER want to be more ledgable, contiplate more slowly, and have less carpel tunnel-y pains.

(Maybe if I ever get around to learning to play guitar I could write SONGS... actually write them down with a pencil in CURSIVE even!  That would be lovely.  Handwriting boot-camp first, then guitar stuff.  Baby steps.)