The Art of Writing Very Badly

Since I was young, I have had motor dysgraphia, which can be described as a deficiency of writing by hand. It is currently classified as a learning disability, and commonly associated with speech impairment (which I had therapy for at a young age), and attention deficient-hyperactivity disorder.

I distinctly remember in early grade school being reprimanded for writing in a seemingly-random mixture of capital and lowercase letters, whichever were the easiest and caused the least amount of pain to write. And there was a lot of pain.

Luckily, this impairment does not transfer and carry through to keyboard writing, where I can reach a maximum of 135 words per minute. I’ve grown up in an age where handwriting is in steep decline in usage. This is all well and good for me, right?

I’ve thought that for a long time, neglecting any paper-based writing to avoid the strain or embarrassment that I felt whenever I looked back to what illegible cryptography that I just produced.

The Art of Hoarding Very Expensive Paper

Recently picked up (albeit a bit late) on the trend of bullet journal writing, which has the catchphrase of being an analogue system in a digital age.

I’ve been a fan of purchasing high-quality, imported stationery from various specialty shops and markets for a long time — but these lovely materials always ended up becoming decorative rather than utilitarian. If I did need to write analog, for whatever reason, I felt so much more comfortable using $2 scribblers than $35 Leuchtturm 1917 journals.

Luckily though, as I’ve grown older, that nervousness of soiling high-quality paper with my terrible handwriting has diminished.

Like most stubborn people, I’ve developed a system that allows me to feel as though I’ve properly taken-up each page with as much eloquence as my poorly-driven hand can muster.

Grids, numerical notation, well-placed highlighting — there are plenty of tricks that you can eventually learn to deceitfully hide your bad handwriting.

Analogue Systems

There is a sincere importance and need when it comes to analog devices and tools. They aren’t efficient — but they are there when we need them. We can feel them, and we can manipulate them with our hands, instead of merely with just our minds. They fit our reality, not needing thick layers of mathematics and advancements in science.

One of the often under-represented differences between humankind and the rest of the natural world is our uncanny ability to archive things. The inner-rings of an ancient tree, or radiocarbon dating can tell a coherent story and history of climatology and our world, but that’s ultimately the extent.

Importance of Archive

Our breath-taking ability to archive the beauty and and horror we create will survive — exponentially longer — than our own century-long lifetimes. And the most basic and important forms of archival is the act of writing.

The personal journal is the most important item that one can create during their lifetime. If will be the most important book you will have read. There is no better way to review and shape our past, plan and appreciate the present, and outline and plan the chaotic future.

We are all writers — not by choice, but by natural compulsion. Not creative writing, or technical writing, not anything that needs to be viewed by the broader public’s scrutiny.

The human brain has an unprecedented, not-fully-understood capacity for the creation of new ideas and concepts through a limitless imagination.

“Analogue 2.0. Or The Amazing Return Of Analogue In The Digital Age” — Those who predicted a “great digital replacement” in culture are paying for their errors. Even if digital usages have…