Wednesday 9 July 2003

Pic of the day: Would you have been able to find a stylus here?

Found & lost

First, I want to apologize for the rambling entry two days ago. For the future, I will try harder to not write a lot when I have little to say.

Today I found the stylus for the electronic drawing pad. It was lost during the reign of my previous computer, sometime last year or the year before that. Even though I saw it fall, I never found it again, until now. I guess that says a lot about my table: There are things there which could easily eat a stylus, and which I would hesitate to confront in order to get my pointing device back. (Actually I looked for it quite thoroughly, but I did not actually empty my table - the stuff on it may well be heavier than I...)

But today I excavated a small bag of masculine fragrance products, and suddenly I noticed my stylus lying in the exposed space beneath it. How it had arrived there, I cannot say. But its return is quite welcome.

***

Alternating input devices is a good idea in general. For me, it is much more. I may have halted the slow destruction of my right hand and arm, but little more. Each morning I wake with a numbness that only gradually fades. Typing more than a couple paragraphs makes the pain acute; normally it is just lying there, a reminder that I can always sense if I turn my attention to it.

I have written this entry with a small stylus on Cassie the Pocket PC. But if I were to do all - or even most - of my writing that way, it would probably be even worse than typing. Speech recognition is another alternative; it can certainly be entertaining, but it is rather cumbersome and also wears down my voice for a while. (I don't speak much usually, since I have no one to speak to.)

For games, I have a two-stick game controller. Now that I am used to it, I can play Morrowind without pain. That is great - it is pretty much the only game I can say that about. DAoC would be OK too, if I did not need to communicate with other players. But when I group, I must type ... and type fast. The same goes for chat rooms and IM, so I avoid them for the most part.

I loved to write. You could almost say I lived to write. The loss of this free flow of expression lies heavily on me. Most other things that "lack" in my life: A woman-mate, children, a dwelling of my own, a vehicle ... these were things I did not value highly enough to make the sacrifices required in our society. But singing and writing I miss acutely. And no sacrifice will ever give me my writing back, the way I always took it for granted. Now I can only write through pain.

But a good range of input devices keeps the pain down at a tolerable level.