Although I’ve never been a great typist, my fingers rest as naturally on the home row as my head does a pillow. But lately typing is a never ending string of frustrations… a seeming combination of my fingers not following orders and the orders issued being flawed. I never get from capital letter to punctuation without a string of back-spaces and a correction. My pinkie reaches for delete/backspace more automatically now than my thumb does the spacebar, and it has A LOT further to travel.
The hypochondria in me says this has something to do with a diagnosis my doctor shared with me this month: Peripheral Neuropathy. For the moment it’s idiopathic. I say that because it is… I like to say it (the word)… and I rarely get to. The general anxiety disorder in me says it’s the years prematurely turning my mind to mush.
Roughly twelve years ago we moved. My job changed pretty significantly, involving A LOT more writing. You’d think with all the practice my fingers would get better on the keys but I think it’s been the opposite. I’ve dabbled with typing tutor programs (on my trusty Mac), taking a cue from one of Cheryl’s old teachers who used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”
Maybe associating writing with work – exclusively – makes it more of a hasty chore and it therefore suffers. In the last twelve years I slowly stopped writing for pleasure, or if not pleasure (exactly) at least not for anything other than work.
Maybe that needs to change.