See that arm-gizmo? Yep. Carpal tunnel. And tendonitis that extends up my arm, over my shoulder, down my scapula, through both my gluteus max and minimus, into my sciatic nerve, and right on down to my right pinkie-toe.
It's what happens when you write with too few breaks. Also with the wrong chair-to-table-to-arm-to-keyboard-to-knee-to-floor-to-finger-to-elbow ratio. To put a finer point on it, it's what happens when you get OLD.
Now, see that left eye of mine? The one that looks slightly squinty and maybe a little red along the bottom if you use your imagination? That, my friends, is an exploded ocular blood-vessel. Yep, one of my dual orbs of sight has had a wardrobe malfunction. And it ain't purty. Up close it looks like someone slapped me in the eye with a stop sign. It happened after I spent several hours on end staring at my computer screen. No idea if that is really what it was from, but it does seem suspicious, doesn't it? I thought so too. So for know we're going to call it:
Old Lady Eyes.
Because none of this stuff ever happened last year when I was young.
I've decided to accomodate it. Use it as a time to take things down a notch. So for now I am taking a break from . . . typing. (Hah! You thought I was going to say writing, didn't you? No way, joserita! I could sooner stop the Kardashians from marrying than stop writing. It's in my soul. And sometimes in my sole. But mostly in my soul. Whether or not it stinks like a fish remains to be seen. I hope to get really good at it and get published some day, thereby doing some good in the world. In the form of mood-lightening. And staying completely unconnected to the Kardashians.)
Instead of typing, I shall be writing in a notebook. (And doing minimal typing to post my blog posts.) And this is a cool thing too. Because I've done it before, and I find that there is something different about writing by hand. I love the computer for speed and brain-dumping. But when I hand-write, I feel closer to the material. It feels like there's more of my heart and brain on the page.
In fact, it makes such a difference that I've decided to buy a spiral notebook for each of the main characters, and a few of the supporting, in my WIP (Work In Progress, i.e., the book I'm writing. Still.), and write their bio's, back story, character info, etc, in them–by hand. And I'll do my chapter outlines by hand. And anything else that feels like it needs the personal touch. Then I'll mush it all together as a book and type the thing into my laptop. And then beauty shall ensue. And so shall representation and publication. Or eBook coding and publication. Or something in public. Maybe just a flash-mob at a local Costco.
That's the plan. And my hand/glutes/pinkie toe and eyeball have no choice in the matter. Except to get better.
I'll let you know how it goes.
In the meantime, how are you all doing on your various projects? Cruising? Stalling? Musing? Revving up? Whatever it is, I hope you're having a grand time!
See you on paper.
Ow. Does your eye hurt as badly as it looks? Aging is no fun at all. At. All. I have had to scale things back here. Too much anxiety has aggravated my hyperthyroidism. What I need more than anything is to be able to regularly waste a bit of time. I need to relax. I need fun. I need to be able to do less and accomplish more. Just not sure how yet.
Weirdly enough, the eye doesn’t hurt at all unless I touch it. Which, you know, I don’t do regularly. Except to remove makeup. If you figure out how to do less and accomplish more you need to write a book about it. And celebrate. I hope you figure it out! Relaxing is highly underrated.
I love paper; do almost all my writing on it 🙂 Get better, Janiel! I like your typing.
Thanks Cassidy! I appreciate it. 🙂
I’m learning to love paper again. I can’t quite imagine hand-writing an entire manuscript , as dependent as I’ve been on the keyboard. But maybe it would be better that way.