Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

The computer age.

I noticed yesterday, whilst drafting out an advert for a new employee (scared one of them off after two and a half months... FEAR ME!) that there is a very serious side effect to the computer literacy that I have gained.

I can't bloody write anymore.

My handwriting has always been, to be perfectly honest, the wrong side of a bucket of steaming shite when it comes to legibility. I did, however always manage to spell things correctly. I have picked up some bad habits now where I have somehow imprinted a sequence of keys and allocated them to a word - I always type 'definitely' as 'defina...' before I stop myself, for one. Every time. It's not that I don't know how to spell the word, it's just my hands seem to run away from me. I think I am trying so hard to hit the keys, one at a time and in the right order, that I spend less time thinking about what's printed on the top of them. The mechanics of transcribing the word has become more brain-intensive. Writing is (or should be still) second nature.

I have cultivated a completely different type of bad habits. When I wrote, I used to get bored in long words, and the height of the letters would reduce and merge together a bit. I used to be able to scribble things down quickly, still get them spelled right, but for them to be just badly written. I am assuming that as a result of the lessened consequences of typing over writing - immediate and invisible use of the backspace key - my mind and concentration on the job at hand wanders because it just doesn't matter. No more do I write more slowly during the second half of the page, as the effort and time involved in having to re-write it neatly ramp up massively. I am starting to try and re-train my mind to reduce this appaling state of affairs.

As an example, I spelt the same word ('experience', rather amusingly) with too many letters in it twice in the space of 5 minutes, and only spotted it when I re-read it. I already hate and avoid relying on the spell checker, but maybe I need to steel mysepf for trying a bit harder? I think the time has come for me to kick myself up the arse.

Not easy when you are sat on a chair in front of the computer, I can tell you.

posted by Brock @ Friday, January 07, 2005