Is it just me, or has anyone else all but forgotten how to write by hand?
In about twenty years, the only things I’ve written by hand are my signature and the odd birthday card.
Somewhere after university I put the pen down, picked up a keyboard, and never looked back. I didn’t decide to. It happened one default at a time.
Try to write properly now and my hand gives out before the paragraph does. A few lines and it aches. The muscle’s just gone.
Odd thing to notice in this job, where I spend my days talking about legacy systems and capabilities that quietly decay until someone reaches for them and they aren’t there.
The industry has spent two decades trying to fix me. Every conference hands you another branded notebook and a pen to match. I must have collected hundreds. I couldn’t tell you where a single one of them is.
And it isn’t passive. Give me a form and I’ll go out of my way to find the electronic version rather than pick up a pen.
Then there are the styluses. I own four devices with one, two phones and two tablets, two usually within reach. The tablet is a precision instrument engineered for handwriting, sketching and design. I use it to watch YouTube.
The pen is always there. I reach for the keyboard anyway, every time.
Turns out the habit was never about the tool. The legacy system was me all along.