Am I ever glad I took typing in high school.
Given the amount of typing I do these days, it would drive me nuts if I hadn't learned how to type quickly - my job would take 3 times as long, emailing would be downright painful (it's painful enough just watching my husband try to type!), and I don't think I'd even bother with online chatting.
It really seems that our lives these days are centered around our computers. Forget the telephone, everyone is emailing, online chatting, texting...
Never mind the lost art of letter writing. Who sits down and writes anything by hand anymore? Too slow, too time-consuming, we must always be in a hurry to get done so we can move on to the next task...
Does anyone really pay attention to handwriting anymore? It used to be that your handwriting said so much about you - if you were a detailed perfectionist, an artistic free spirit, or a doctor (which meant your handwriting was entirely illegible) Now I'm not even sure they teach handwriting in schools anymore - don't they all have their own laptops?
It really is a lost art. I remember as I was growing up, I was constantly experimenting with my handwriting, trying to get it just the way I liked it. I think I may have been almost into my twenties before I stopped making little adjustments to the way I wrote a "d", or a "j". These days, my handwriting isn't nearly as neat as it used to be. I've gotten so used to the speed of typing, that I get impatient with hand-writing, and as a result the hand-writing has gotten very messy, almost illegible even to myself at times.
It sure isn't pretty.
One thing I love to do, is read old letters. Some written by myself, some not...it's very interesting not only to read what was written, but to see how it was written. Some people's handwriting can really surprise you. I'd grown up with the notion that all men/boys had messy handwriting. Their hands were bigger, fingers thicker, and they just didn't care if their handwriting was, well, pretty. But I remember so many times, getting a cheque from my grandparents at Christmas time, and being surprised to see the signature of my Grandfather in very neat, proper handwriting. I often had to check the signature to see if it was my grandfather or grandmother who had written the cheque, their handwriting was that similar! There was also a guy that I dated (many!) years ago, who had neater and more artistic-looking handwriting than most girls I knew.
Something inside me really wants to get back to writing by hand. Not sure what to write yet, but I have always had that oh-so-romantic notion of keeping a journal. Didn't all us girls think about that when we were young? Of course, we called them our "diaries" back then. "Journal" just sounds much more mature, more grown-up. You always read in novels about these journals kept by women that are passed down to their descendents, who read them with great interest. Should I be so conceited as to think that someday, my children or even grandchildren might be interested in reading what I might have had to say?
(Then again, what is this blog for??)
But once again, it's about the handwriting. Maybe someday, someone might see more of me in my handwriting than they might in a bunch of kilobytes on a computer server somewhere. Type script seems so...impersonal. Isn't that why there are so many fonts? Aren't we really trying to find a font that says more about ourselves than, say, the generic-ness of "Times New Roman"? Even "Arial" is pretty bland. Maybe I'll start hand-writing my blog entries, then scanning them into the computer...
Who am I kidding? I can't even keep a blog consistently, let alone a hand-written journal. Over the years, I have bought so many journals with the intention of writing in them regularly, and they all sit with only a few pages filled. (and many pages torn out - sometimes I end up writing things I would never want anyone to read!) I guess there's just such a romantic pull to the whole idea of keeping a journal. I would have to slow down, take the time to think about what I would write, before I write it. (no backspace key!) I'd have to be patient with my hands, they can only write so fast. And they can only write so long before the writer's cramp sets in.
Oh, the things we take for granted in the computer age. But at what cost? We're all in such a hurry these days, we get impatient and downright ticked-off if the computer is just slightly slower than instantaneous, we lay on the horn and yell our fool heads off if the person in front of us doesn't peel off the mark when the traffic light turns green, or when they don't drive at least 20km/hr above the speed limit...
But, maybe if I decide to revive my penmanship as penmanship, not type-man-ship, it would help me to slow down a bit, perhaps I'll see a few things I might have missed, maybe I'll appreciate some of the smaller things in life. Maybe it will encourage me to take some "me time", time away from the hectic day-to-day life of a wife and mom who has a full-time job outside the home.
Time to write.
Time to breathe.
