I’ve been thinking about it.
I don’t really write too often. I enjoy writing, and always have. It’s a pleasure to create and speak and I attest (as someone who enjoys the sound of their own voice very much) that I enjoy talking as such.
But I don’t. And why is that? Writing written off by minutiae. I want to read more about this thing. The laundry needs hanging. I have to work tomorrow morning. When was the last time we ate out? I should clean up the room. I want to wait until I finish the other website I’m designing. There’s a backlog of pictures to upload. I need to do X before Y because Y is not as immediate as X, although Y is a long-term goal so I’ll still feel bad and want to.
I don’t know why I don’t write as often. I guess that I don’t identify as “a writer” much anymore, because I do so many other things. But I still write. As said before and better, by others, it fills all the little gaps in one’s daily existence. It rests in small spaces between cracks in the sidewalk, tiny green life poking through the sidewalk, not defiant, just pleasantly and idly existing. I may not write like a madman, fifty-thousand soldiers strong, but I write.
Today I write anew. Today I found a keyboard in the basement of my place of work, and I took it home and it is magnificent. It is a vintage IBM Model M keyboard with bucking spring design; the keys are pressed, they give resistance, and then they *click* and the moment they click the character is registered. There is no latency. There is no softness. It is a machine and it is mechanical. It’s called force-feedback, and it is totally neat. It is a different feeling, one I’d never expect. I’ve typed this whole thing with nary a typing error to speak. Amazing.
And now I am reading the Wikipedia entry on the Model M and I notice something… this is the keyboard of my childhood. The very keys I used to play “Ernie’s Big Splash” when I was 6, are the keys I now use to blog about not blogging. Incidentally, the former still seems more fun. Incidentally, I still don’t like the word “blog.” And now I remember that I used to write on that thing all the time, back when computers had the one font and the one size, text white on blue, and what-you-saw wasn’t what-you-got cause that was set on the printer itself. A matrix of dots made the things you wrote magically appear, and then they could go on the fridge or something.
All of this does beg the question, though… if something as simple (if sensory) as clicky-typing can cause me to reflect on my writing and gain understanding of why I might do it or not do it, and write this much about writing, aren’t I preoccupied with it enough to put a little more effort into it?
I refuse to make a resolution. How bout a to-do item instead?
To-do: write more. Clicky keys nice.
I discovered a small colony of creatures under refuse of broken cactus plants the other day. I thought they were earthworms at first, those dark slimy shapes squirming around under the wet debris. But they squirmed wrong. I looked closer—very close in fact—and saw, oddly, that they had legs. Tiny, tiny legs with minuscule fingers. I thought they were skinks as their bodies were so long comparatively. After research, however, I have concluded that there is a population of California Slender Salamanders living in my backyard, in urban San Francisco. They’ve probably been there a very long time. I’m told they have a lifetime range of about 14 square meters—less than the backyard. Salamanders in the garden make me happy.
