Something Eloquent

I have a note­book in my pocket. Ostensibly this is so that if I have a sud­den inspir­a­tion to write, or some ran­dom idea jumps in to my head and I must tell the world about it, I have a place to take notes. I can jot down a bit of an out­line so that the thought or idea doesn’t get lost in the mono­tony of the rest of my day. This would work really well if, how­ever, I also car­ried a pen. I’ll have to work on that. “Working on it” seems to be the theme of this new hobby/habit/life that I’m try­ing to develop. Writing is hard, and I waver. I would waver more if it were easier though. I would get bored. I would think that it’s point­less. I would make all sorts of wrong-headed assump­tions that trivi­al­ize the pursuit.

This post wasn’t planned, as you will likely be able to surmise.

So I’m glad that writ­ing is hard. It chal­lenges me and forces me to think. It makes me try to touch type. I’d for­got­ten about touch typ­ing until just now. I usu­ally focus on the key­board when I type, now I’m look­ing at the screen. The pro­cess is much slower than I’m used to, I have to think about where each of the let­ter on the key­board are. It’s kind of neat though, with prac­tice I can ima­gine myself sit­ting down at the com­puter and simply watch­ing the words appear on the screen. My thoughts would flow through my fin­gers without any con­scious effort.

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

it took me about 20 seconds to go through the alpha­bet just then, touch typ­ing. You care, trust me.

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

~10 seconds while look­ing at the keys.

I remem­ber in grade eight or nine in “Computer Science” class, we were required to study touch typ­ing. Back then I thought it was pretty point­less, I could see the let­ters on the key­board, why shouldn’t I use that resource. Gosh! But now I think about it, per­haps the teacher was right. If I learn this skill, I will not only have a new mar­ket­able tal­ent, I will be faster and more effi­cient with my time. Rather than read things twice – once when I type it, and once to make sure that I typed it cor­rectly – I will need only to read once, and see the mis­takes as they arise!