My Leftward Journey

Almost two years ago now, I started an ambitious new project--to learn to write left-handed. Although I used both hands equally for most things as a child, with writing I gravitated towards right-handedness. My dad is right-handed; my mom is left-handed. The difference is something I grew up with, and wondered about.

This was not my first attempt to achieve that goal. I fiddled around in middle and high school, off and on, never for more than a couple of days. My handwriting has never been good, and left-handed, I achieved utter illegibility.

In graduate school I renewed the effort, buying a coloring book and crayons, which I colored left-handed. I went through a goodly portion of the book, but never went further.

Finally, I left grad school and got a Real Job. One month, April of 2006, I was given a month long project which involved writing numbers on two different spreadsheets. I got tired of swiveling in my chair or turning my body from side to side, over and over, nine hours a day. I recalled my old project and decided to dual wield my writing instruments.

Thankfully, only I was required to read what I wrote.

Still, practicing on just numbers was a great way to start. The number of characters are fewer, and they involve some of the simpler shapes (1, 0 and 8, for example) as well as more challenging ones (I always had a hard time with 7's). By the end of the month, I had managed a lot of progress.

And that's because I worked at it every day, for hours. Now I knew how I had to progress with the task of writing. I didn't have hours a day for that, but that same amount of practice, spread over a longer period, would have the same effect.

So I worked a little each day, at lunch. Usually I wrote out the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky," since I know it from memory, and it uses every letter (as long as I spelled it "mimzy" instead of "mimsy").

I can now write at about a third grade level with my left hand, maybe fourth. I want to improve it, and expand my goal. Writing isn't enough. I eventually want to be fully ambidextrous in everything I do, from writing to cooking to crocheting to getting dressed in the morning. The best way of doing that is to try those things left handed first, build up my dexterity, then devise a way that uses that equal dexterity to best effect.

I'm going to use this blog to post my progress and thoughts on this project, and track my success or failure.