[hospadar]

I've been really leaning into handwriting - and good penmanship in general as a fun creative activity. I started writing all my notes/journal entries/etc in cursive during covid just for something to do and I've become very enamored of the process. Often I find myself wanting to write just to do it (I imagine if I was in to needlepoint, this is the time I'd do needlepoint). I end up writing a lot of journal entries and letters to friends (it usually starts with "I want to write" and my own thoughts and doings are an easy subject) which has a nice personal and social effect. I acquired some fancy pens and sewed myself a fancy leather journal that are a pleasure to write with and that have really accelerated and sustained the habit.

I wouldn't make any claims that writing has somehow made me magically smarter or better at anything else, I just find it fun to do (and I believe that pleasure is vastly more important than "productivity" so that's a win for me). It seems probable that my composition skills are better (or at least different in some hard-to-define way) due to the slower speed and non-editability of handwritten text. I rarely find myself at a loss for what sentence to write next when I'm handwriting because my thoughts are already buffered up since it takes them a bit longer to get onto the page.

Another angle for me is that I recently picked up a chronic disease which has changed my energy levels a lot and many old hobbies are no longer feasible as often as they used to be. I can write even when I feel like there's a mountain of tires on fire inside my head.