Digital vs Manual Skills

February 16, 2017 — #InCoWriMo, creativity, cursive, penmanship

post cards from the world

The journey into my stationary drawer and the the mailbox this month is a very healthy investigation into my skills.  #InCoWriMo is a challenge in correspondence by hand, by snail mail during the month of February.  I have received the most beautifully written letters from around the country.  I am so impressed with some of the cursive that I tried it myself.  Good grief, was I ever bad at it.  It is not like riding a bicycle, it does not come back naturally.  I was never great at penmanship, but I could do it 50 years ago.  I am not sure when I switched to printing, but it probably was in architecture school.  When I attempted to write longhand it was incredibly challenging, and I only lasted a short paragraph before I abandoned hope.  I also notice how very addicted I am to spellcheck.  I halt in the middle of writing a word by hand, and no magic feature steps in to spell for me..I am almost disabled by this.  I have personally lost my own skills by not practicing them.  It is not too late for me to recover lost skills of youth.

My new pen pals have shown me that I lean to hard on digital skills.  If the internet goes down what will become of me? I must balance my creative life by spending some of it by hand on paper..I can still take a picture of it and post it on instagram.  I used to sew, draw, write songs and poetry, all without computer assistance of any kind.  I even had a treadle sewing machine at one point.  I made my living as a production potter, throwing pots on a kick wheel.  I was such a home grown/ hand made/ alternative economy hippie that I did now own a television.  Now I hear people talking about going back to the old Nokia un-smart phone to regain balance in life.  I don’t really have a phone addiction so much as a general digital device issue.  Balance for me will involve spending more time writing by hand.  I need the tactile therapeutic value of putting the pen on the paper.  The muse responds differently than when it is coming through a keyboard.  My manual muse needs encouragement. What about you, gentle reader?  Do you still write by hand?