450 Minutes: Thumb-Writing

I was gifted a Vernet Band Writer from a friend of mine. As far as anything in the nail-writer/thumb-writer area is concerned, this feels pretty stable and usable to me. 

I've never been really good with a thumb-writer. I'm not a total spazz, I can write a couple of digits, or make a checkmark fairly easily. Especially when I have two hands holding a stiff pad. But I think the ideal would be able to write a word or two quickly and legibly with one hand holding a business card. And then not to have to come up with some excuse why it looks so bad. "Oh, I wrote this in the middle of the night, with the lights off, and the pencil in my butthole because my hands were holding a birthday cake."

Now, the truth is I haven't really seen many professionals use a thumb/nail-writer to write full words regularly either. And on the rare cases I do, their legibility can be squarely put at "peeing your name in the snow" levels. So is it even possible to get really good at it?

If you're like me, you're willing to put practice into something, but if you don't see some signs of improvement somewhat quickly, you're likely to abandon that pursuit. With this new series, 450 Minutes, I'm going to practice something for 15 minutes a day, every day, for 30 days. I will commit to putting in the time regardless of whether I see improvement or not. Then we'll see to what extent I improved over the course of the month—if at all.

So, let's see where things stand now. Here's my one-handed thumb-writing abilities as of today, having not practiced anything more than a couple numbers or letters in many years.

This has been sped up 50% for GIF purposes. It took me 15 seconds to do that. And no, I haven't changed the name of this site to The Jeiv. I just suck. Meet me back here in a month to see if I've gotten any better.

What's my plan? Well, I bought one of these books and I'm going to work my way through it as if I was first learning to write.

That seems like a logical first step. Then I'll just use a random word generator to shoot words out at me and I'll attempt writing them, hopefully getting a little smoother over time. I've been playing the long con with my thumb-writing game because my normal handwriting is already pretty shitty, so I don't have to worry too much about being overly neat.

See you in a month.

Well... I'll see you before that. But I mean I'll check back with you on this particular subject in a month.