About seven or eight years back, my right wrist started showing the signs of carpel tunnel syndrome. I'm not overly gifted with motor skills--as any number of arcade games could attest--but it took only about a week for mousing with my left hand to feel unforced. Today, it's as natural as breathing for me.
My right hand retains its monopoly on handwriting duties, though. Having mostly grown up in a paper-and-pencil world, it's also as natural as breathing. Especially when there's creative thinking to be done. Thoughts seem to flow from brain down neck, over to the point of the shoulder, down the arm, concentrated by wrist and fingers through the ball-point. The cursive must be somewhere between legible and calligraphic. The delay gives thoughts time to congeal in a way that letters rushing toward a typed margin--all but falling over one another in the process--never could.
Meanwhile, the left hand is free to tap the universe through the filter of a web browser, providing new ingredients for what will flow onto the page, perhaps rearranging perceived reality or unlocking the odd "Ah-ha!" here and there. Never let it be said that I don't appreciate technology--old and new. Almost as much as having the opposable thumbs to take full advantage of it.
