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Why does my handwriting look so bad now?

bad handwriting

<edit>Penmanship update #1</edit>

Recently I’ve noticed that my penmanship has gotten really bad.  Well, really bad for me.  I used to have beautiful writing.  Well, maybe not beautiful.  But compared to my peers, my handwriting has always been very nice.  Not just legible, as it still is legible, but neat and even and…nice looking.  Not anymore.  I wrote some letters these last few days and I took a good look at my writing.  It looks terrible.  Terrible for me.  Let’s just get that clear right now.  My standard for my handwriting (read: the standard my mother ingrained into me) is rather high.  So while my handwriting is perfectly legible still and probably a lot better than my colleagues’ at work (as they are guys with fairly stereotypical guy writing), it annoys me that it has deteriorated into the state it’s in now.  I’m disgusted.

So, I’ve been poking around on the internets some to see how best to start improving my penmanship back to what it was and maybe even better.  I think I would really like to have the ornate script of ye olden times.  I’m not sure how practical that would be though.  If I’m writing something by hand, I often still need to be fairly quick about it.  Drawing in extra loops and flourishes may look quite nice on paper, but I’m sure it slows down say, your notetaking, considerably.  I don’t like that idea at all.

Interestingly though, I found a tidbit online that suggested that people take a calligraphy class to help with their daily handwriting.  I suppose that makes sense.  Learning the skills and techniques of calligraphy could easily transfer into your normal, daily script.  You could leave out all the flourishes.

Now then, I have no intention of taking a class.  I hardly have the time to breathe, let alone try and find time to take a class.  I would really like to…but again, not practical.  I am the personification of practicality here.  Ok, not really.  I might be the personification of carpal tunnel syndrome.  But that’s also arguable.  Anyway, I can’t find the time to take an actual class on calligraphy, but I do have a calligraphy book that I bought some years back when I wanted to take it up and I do have a set of simple calligraphy pens.  I would really like a dip pen and a set of interesting nibs with interesting inks, but that will have to come at a later date.  What I have now is more than adequate to start out.

So, the plan is to start working my way through the book in earnest.  I will start with the foundational hand and work my way through the hands provided.  I’ll probably provide a sample of my work from time to time and maybe even do some of the projects they suggest in the book.  Hopefully, my penmanship will start creeping back up to my ever-so-lofty standards I set for it.  Hopefully.

 

There’s a squirrel sleeping in our plotter

Some of you may know Toby.  He is a squirrel.  I think he has a small infatuation with my friend.  He follows her everywhere.  I got to witness some of this first hand when we were gallivanting around Dallas.  But, I also found out that he’s very shy and always hides in places so as not be seen.  He can be heard though, because he’s always squeaking.  And I’ve also discovered that Toby has a very large family and/or social network.  They’re everywhere.  They’re all quite shy.  They’re all quite curious and what to follow you and know what you are doing.  They all like to squeak and chatter and chitter and squitter.
I found out recently that one of Toby’s friends lives in our plotter.  I think it’s the fat gray squirrel who sometimes sits on the branch in the Enchanted Forest giving advice to adventurers.  You know, the bossy one.  The one with twenty-three children who are all exceedingly polite, unlike the lost princes who seek her advice.  Anyway, I think she’s moved from the Enchanted Forest and into our plotter.  I think she’s retired now from giving advice to wayward adventurers and her children are probably all grown up.  She’s retired into our plotter.  And she snores.  She seems like she’d be the type to snore.  Don’t believe me?  I’ve got a recording of it.

Um…sorry about the quality and the length.  In converting it to a video, my audio was automatically chopped and I didn’t feel like redoing it so that you got to hear all of it.  Anyway, I was trying to furtively record the squirrel snoring while not waking her up and not attracting too much attention.  I failed at the last one.  One of the guys saw me by the plotter and he wanted to know what I had done to fix it.  Um…nothing.  I was just trying to get a recording of the squirrel, who retired into our plotter, snoring away.  You know.  As one does.  But you don’t have to hear our little exchange now because it got cut off.  Huzzah!

By the way, the image from the video was taken by Heather Champ and is used under Creative Commons.  You can find more of her stuff and specifically that squirrel here.