Righter writing

I’ve been hold­ing the pen (and before that, the pen­cil and cray­on) incor­rect­ly for as long as I’ve been writ­ing. As such, my hand­writ­ing is pret­ty ter­ri­ble and I’ve always been prone to hand cramp­ing. Var­i­ous teach­ers and at least a cou­ple of par­ents have tried to cor­rect this over the years, but I’ve always just ignored them and gone on writ­ing as I pleased. I found my way eas­i­er and more com­fort­able, although the com­fort would only last for the first few minutes.

I’m not sure what hap­pened, but about a month ago I was sit­ting at my desk and I decid­ed that I was going to start hold­ing the pen cor­rect­ly. At first it was a dif­fi­cult, frus­trat­ing and uncom­fort­ably con­scious process, and I would some­times for­get to do so, but I made sure to cor­rect myself as soon as I remem­bered. I soon found it easy enough to do with chunki­er pens (like most of my foun­tain pens), but now I’m able to do it well enough on days I car­ry some­thing thin­ner (like a Park­er Jotter).

Con­se­quent­ly, I’m writ­ing a bit more slow­ly and delib­er­ate­ly now, and while my hand­writ­ing has­n’t real­ly changed at all, the new hand posi­tion has become auto­mat­ic — I now just pick up the pen and hold it cor­rect­ly. Since I still pre­fer to do much of my dai­ly think­ing ink-on-dead-tree-style, this small change con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to my qual­i­ty of life, as I trade short-term com­fort for long-term comfort.

“Next up is cor­rect­ing my sit­ting pos­ture,” he writes, slouch­ing terribly.