Day 43/245

About a week ago, I went through a spell of "I'm sooooooo sick of this." My right hand seemed to have woken up, and was trying to reassert its dominance. The clumsiness in my left caused me to break a glass, make a mess on the stove, and nearly cut myself with a kitchen knife.

But I powered through, and the feeling passed. Yesterday, I noticed that my handwriting had improved dramatically over the last month. And not just the handwriting--the writing speed has increased as well, to the point that I'm at about 80% of my right-handed speed, and at a similar legibility level.

The biggest problem I still have with handwriting is consistency. Nine times out of ten, I'll form a letter the same way, but the tenth turns into a malformed, mutant aberration. It used to be one in five, and before that, one in two, so I'm getting better. (Of course, when I started, they were all like that!)

The more I do this, the more I come to understand that there are really two tasks I'm working on at once.

1. Habit
   
   I'm trying to rewrite a lifetime of habits that have built up, habits I didn't even know existed. Sometimes it's as simple and which side I put my briefcase on, or which hand leans on the couch when I bend over to turn on the table lamp. In fact, these small habits are the hardest to correct, because to change them, you have to be aware of laterality all the time. And that's hard to maintain.
   
   
2. Dexterity
   
   Even if you remember to use your less dominant hand, that doesn't mean it can accomplish the task with dexterity. That takes repeated practice. If I establish the right habits, then I will have ample opportunity to build that dexterity.

Of course, I don't want to lose sight of my eventual goal, either. I'm not trying to become left handed. I'm trying to become ambidextrous. So why, then, am I starting out by essentially living left-handedly? (Shut up, it's a word.)

My left hand has a long way to go before it is equal to the right in dexterity. If I start out trying to depend on it only half the time, it will take at least twice as long to achieve dexterity.

Also, I'm trying to establish habits for doing things left handed that are equally strong to the habits for doing it right handed. Once I've achieve that dexterity and those habits, the final stage of the plan will be to learn to analyze situations to see which hand would be most efficient to use. If I can start to do that analysis unconsciously, and use the appropriate hand for any situation with equal ease, then I will have achieved the goal of ambidexterity.

In short, I feel like I'm making progress. And I shouldn't expect too much yet--I'm only 17.5% through this experiment, after all.

Day 19/245

At first, I was worried that eight months might not be enough time. Now I'm thinking that it might not take that long at all.

I timed myself the other day. My left-handed printing is now at 80% of the speed of my right hand, and the penmanship is at least equal, if not a little better. The same thing holds for cursive writing (82%, to be precise), and the penmanship is much better. I can now sign my name with my left hand equally well, and what's more, the signature is virtually identical. This is good--I'd rather not be arrested for forging my own signature.

For certain tasks, I now use my left hand without thinking. These are the "every day" sorts of tasks, cooking and cleaning and brushing my teeth. For others I still experience some confusion, but it passes quickly.

Finally yesterday, I experienced something new. On a task that I had never tried before--filling a glass bottle with mead, if you're curious--I did it with my left hand without thinking about it first. This was a big step.

You see, one thing that was worrying me is this. It's one thing to master tasks that you've done before with a non-dominant hand. But what about developing skill and dexterity for new tasks? How can you practice developing skill in things you've never done before?

Logically, though, dexterity in certain tasks carries over to dexterity in others. The greater general dexterity I have, the greater specific dexterity I'll have as well. And without realizing it, I've taken the precise tactic necessary to achieve this. By forcing my non-dominant hand to behave as the dominant one in all tasks, I have begun to achieve specific dexterity in all these tasks, which then translates into a higher level of general dexterity.

There are certain tasks, though, at which my left side is woefully inadequate. Throwing, for example. I'm not awesome at throwing with my right side, for that matter, but my left is totally stupid. And it's not something I have an easy opportunity to practice.

Another is crochet. I have several projects that I need to complete at the moment, but I can't really switch in the middle. (Although, come to think of it, I'd love to see what it would look like if I did each alternate row left handed, then right handed. I've never seen it done, probably because no one can really do it. That would be worth trying out.)

I'm less than three weeks into this project, but in a way, it feels much longer. I'll just have to see how I progress after a few months have passed.