Keyboard

I've always wanted to enjoy writing by hand more than writing digitally. But this time around traveling I must confess. I don't write much in my journal. Partially because the filling in my pen sucks. It's blodgy, it eats the paper and creates these smears on my paper. It does not have the correct tactile rolling feel it should have. I get cramped hands while writing. Don't get me wrong. I do love writing by hand. I enjoy the labor and the slowness of it. It calms me down. But it is too slow. Errors are there forever. You cannot correct your mistakes except by crossing the words out I no longer want. It then looks all messy and inadequate.

The biggest part though is I've always loved typing on a keyboard. You can correct errors. I can read something over and just adjust what I want the way I want it. Indefinitely. I'm way faster typing then I'll ever be writing manually. At least manually I can read two weeks later. I like that it is using both of my hands fully with all my fingers engaged. It feels more like an instrument. A real extension. A pen is just engaging two to three fingers. I don't have to worry about not being able to read what I wrote. I can sync my notes across the web to a safe place if I so choose.

So I bought a small bluetooth keyboard and am now writing my thoughts and notes on my phone. It looks completely rediculous, but I love it. I don't need a laptop (although I should have just brought that along, but that is a different discussion and matter completely). I can just type away and jot down my thoughts.

The nostalgia around writing by hand is intriguing to me. I've always had these two sides. I refused to use a CNC machine while learning fine woodworking. I wanted to do everthing by hand. The real way. The original way. But in the evenings I would play around with computers for hours, installing and configuring servers. Figuring out how to get my old crappy computers to run a stable GNU/Linux. Writing scripts and small programs and compiling kernels. But using a machine for woodworking was out of the question. It still baffels me. Some of the reasons behind it are valid. I understand how a CNC works. It is just a matter of programming some vectors in script and feeding that to a computer that excecutes my program. There was nothing 'real' for me to learn there. Just apply some mathematics and may be some trial and error with speeds of the tools. The thing I wanted to learn was how to master a skill manually, CNC felt like cheating.

The same duality exists with pen + paper and a phone/computer + keyboard. I've been told by multiple sources writing by hand is better. It is more connected to what you think. It is the real expression of your thoughts and allows a better connection to yourself. Most of those people though are older than me, did not grow up with computers and are not as fast with a keyboard. I don't know if there is a truth in the better connection with physical manual writing on paper or not. All I know and care about is I write faster, can write more close to my thoughts with a keyboard and the keyboard feels like an instrument I mastered more than a pen. I love my keyboard!