THUMBS

There’s $1200 worth of Steve Jobs plastic and metal across the room sitting, unopened and unused, meanwhile I’m pecking away with my thumbs on an iPhone, likely as fast or faster than I type. This is amusing to me.  One would think that an actual keypad would produce much faster results than this, but this, is the present (future?). I promise not to keep bringing up the only book I’ve read in the last year but one more thing about Stephen King’s, On Writing struck me,  not of its substance, but how it made me consider how I produce these musings and if, when employed, I produce a book. 

On or about two thirds of the way through, the discussion turns towards a space where you can close the door and be left to do the work. It need not be especially fancy, but comfortable and filled with the things that make writing easier for you. A desk, comfortable chair, pens (would be pencils for me) and paper, good light and a door that shuts. 

I laughed to myself as I considered my writing space. A sprawling teal couch in my den. No writing apparatus. My phone and Flowstate app on dark mode and darkness. The last item feeling most important. 

All of this evolved over the last couple of years, but has become my habit. I wake up, start coffee, scroll the internet for the big happenings that occurred while I slept (always none). Feed the dog, pour the first cup, open the app and start. 

The darkness is key for me. Like the deep end of the pool I spoke of yesterday, it blocks all but the tunnel from my eyes to the phone. It’s like the door that closes. I consider how I’d create the perfect writing space for me and while the phone may eventually evolve to a computer, the dark seems like a non negotiable. What’s funny is I’d never thought about it until yesterday. 

I’d considered the phone typing before. Have even written 2-3 things on the computer. I couldn’t figure out why that process felt so clunky to me but upon further reflection it’s the typing. Humans are incredible learning machines. Think we don’t adapt and evolve.?Look no further than this post written with my two opposable thumbs. The ultimate primate differentiator. It’s incredible to consider. 

For nearly 35 years or so I’ve been hunting and pecking on a typewriter or keyboard but in the span of two years I’ve all but transferred most of that production to a phone. So much so that I never really thought twice about it other than “if I ever wrote a book, surely I’d have to change to a computer.”  I’m beginning to doubt that completely. 

I can even switch to drinking coffee and typing at the same time. I’m doing this now and my words per minute only fell off by a third. Try that with a keyboard. 

The above is yet another example of filling the spaces with meaningless drivel, a way to meet the goals of word production I’ve set forth in the last few days. I know that if the mind is spurred on, it produces. Produce enough and the content of that production slowly shifts from a discussion on the prowess of my thumbs to actual things of note. One just has to stick with it. 

I’d encourage everyone to give writing a chance. In early 2020 I pushed a friend to do it to work through some things. It wasn’t easy but it seemed to help him. If I have any one regret from high school it would be not journaling (really what this is) since then. As I try and pull up the memories, they are foggy or in the case of the 90’s, just gone. I can look back to a date in 2019, open a post and crawl inside my head for a bit. When I do this, most of the time I have almost zero recognition of writing it and it is a delight (I’ve used this word twice in as many days). I like trying to recreate the couch time I must have spent considering it and it’s always at the least, interesting. I wish I knew what I was thinking on say  August, 7th 1989, in the weeks leading up to college. Or maybe in 1999 when I was at the edge of full blown addiction. Would I have sent future me a warning. Or past me. Or would I have simply been present me, cataloging with a pen and paper (no thumb typing then), the angst of the day. 

I wonder if I would have written like I do now. I mean I think it’s likely but I am looking backwards to that with these eyes that write these words. I wonder if I would have catalogued the drunkenness. The waste of time. The wonder of what the hell I was actually going to do with my life. I imagine so. 

I mean I do it now and the path of that “what I will do with my life” still seems rocky and floppy, a hanging bridge with actual forks over a crevasse of choices and what if’s, like some Tibetan, fog covered mountain scape with death inducing drops on either side. The only thing  worse in my height fearing  brain than a hanging bridge? Clearly, a hanging bridge with choose your own adventure turns and some wind added in. 

I wonder a lot about younger me. What he could have avoided. What he should have done differently. I almost always  arrive at “absolutely nothing”. For most of my youth I thought I’d be a doctor, just like my dad. As I approach 50, I can’t for a moment fathom going to the same place every day and doing the exact same thing. I know this is a lot of jobs, but 16 year old me couldn’t consider what “work” was. I never once thought about it. I never put myself into a going to the same place every day for the next 30+ years mindset and as I sit here now, know I never once considered what “being a doctor” was. What would any of us do if we knew what adulthood actually was?. 

The thought that “Dr. Fellows” me would have battled this thing I don’t like makes me believe that I’d have arrived right where I am today, unsure, questioning, a turn away from something new. This thought erases life choice regret and that’s reassuring in an odd way. It makes me content. 

My thumbs. Ubiquitous. Halt for today.

#hugsandhi5s