Week #23: Emily To The Rescue

I'm back to handwriting in a notebook, rediscovering the feel of the paper under my hand and pen. Yeah, I've "rediscovered" it before, but I'm always surprised how much I like the actual physical act of writing. In our time-compressed society, no one (including me) has time for anything less than a 80WPM (minimum) word-processing operation of some sort, and as a result, most of us NEVER write anything longer than a phone number.

Shame, that. I quite like it,when I have time (practically never.)

For those of you who recall my last real-paper binge (see this link and that one for further,) I was using a small pocket-notebook. In this iteration, I'm using a rather larger notebook which works out better because I'm left-handed. If you're left-handed, you know what I mean, but if not, all I can say is getting the hand/pen thing going in a direction/configuration that is actually functional is...a challenge.

In fact, I usually write on the back of the pages, since writing the regular way is just a PITA. If you're right-handed, try writing on the back of the pages, and you'll see what I mean.

In any event, I have again discovered that the spell-check on that system sucks, and the font is nearly unreadable. Can't blame hardware or software this time, so it's probably a wetware issue.

When I was a kid, I used to have great handwriting. Won awards, y'know. Nowadays, I'm lucky if I can re-read something I've just written and make heads or tails out of it. This is an actual couple of pages out of my notebook, and although I've blurred it up some, I think it's pretty clear what I'm talking about, vis-a-vis craptacular handwriting.

In fact, I was getting pretty annoyed that I couldn't seem to recapture my golden youth, back when I was capable of writing a line that didn't require a archaeological linguist to translate.

Then the other day I was doing some research for a thing. As a completely unrelated discovery, I ran across a dense wad of original works by Emily Dickenson (this particular chunk is digitized by the Boston Library.) Emily is, as you probably know, a fantastically successful/popular 19th Century poet who wrote in the whiny, lovelorn, "Alas -- woe is me" style popular even unto this day among desperately unhappy hormonal tween girls as well as most "Women In Tweeds And Sensible Shoes" sororities around the country. 

The woman simply wrote ALL THE TIME, and even in her day, when women weren't usually considered to be career anythings, she was a professional writer/poet. Here's a sample:

Suddenly, I'm feeling a LOT better about my pen-and-ink skills. Thanks,Emily!

Back to the notebook now.