Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Blogger Killed the Journal Writer?


For some reason today was the day that I suddenly had a moment of hand-written journal crisis. Meaning that I began to seriously consider making the switch to an electronic journal. Maybe just in a Word Document on my laptop, or something similar. I am currently on volume XI of my old-fashioned, pen-and-ink, love-affair with my own life, and I am starting to get a little frustrated with the medium. It is pretty much the only thing that I hand-write anymore, and I am becoming increasingly aware of how much slower things come out when using just one hand and a pen.

At work I occasionally do transcriptions of 19th century journals, and I am constantly frustrated by one journal writer in particular who is fairly esoteric (he himself being the only initiated) in his handwriting. I then look at my own journal and realize that I am not really one to be calling the kettle its proverbial dark color. Granted, it is likely that not even my children or grandchildren will read more than a page or two of my journal--if that. Still, on the off-chance that they do I would like it to be legible, but since it is the only thing I hand write these days my penmanship is going the way of certain 19th century journals writers that I complain about.

I can see some disadvantages as well though. I think I will have to come back to this dilemma.

3 comments:

  1. Having caught up late and read chronologically, but with glances to the margins, I already know that in the next post, you will give up the idea of abandoning Dr. Richards on the sinking penman-ship. (I should be shot for that joke. Or rather, considering the mode shift you're contemplating here, electrocuted.)

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  2. Yes, Willard and I will go down with the USS Chicken-Scratch. We will throw many messages in bottles overboard that will be found but never understood.

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  3. Oh, and your comment was brilliant by the way. I hope you are neither shot nor electrocuted.

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