Month: May 2015

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Sit Up Straight, Part Four: Keys to Creativity

I never learned how to type properly. I went from hunt-and-peck to 50 words per minute on my own. I started by staring at the keys. I still stare at the keys.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I have the keyboard memorized. I don’t have to look at it to find the letters. What I have to do is face it. My muscle memory for typing is so strongly tied to looking at the keys, it shuts down if I try to face the screen. I’ve tested a few different positions, with the following results:

Can Type Just Fine:

  1. hunched over the keyboard and staring at it (natural resting state)
  2. hunched but with my eyes purposely unfocused
  3. hunched with my eyes closed
  4. sitting up but with my head still tilted down

Still Works But Slower and with More Mistakes:

  1. sitting up with my head down but eyes closed
  2. facing the screen with eyes unfocused
  3. facing the screen with eyes closed

Get Stuck After Two Sentences:

  1. facing the screen and watching as I type

The profound connection my brain has made to my neck is amazing. Somehow I’ve managed to tie a physical posture, a dexterity-based task, and creative imagination together like a Gordian Knot . When I try to change one, the others shut down.

KeyboardI tried taking online typing courses, hoping I could re-learn by being taught properly. I got better at typing while looking at the screen, and thought fixing my typing posture might be simple. But when I tried keeping that posture during my daily writing session everything fell apart. I couldn’t do it. I would write a sentence or two and my brain would just stop. Normally I can write an entire post in one sitting without stopping. The words flow naturally and uncritically and I can come back to edit later. But when I was typing properly I found my internal editor could not shut up.

After much trial and error I determined the problem. When I type hunched over and facing the keys, I know the words because I am listening to them. Some voice in the back of my head starts talking, and the fingers follow. This is probably why I have such a problem with typing the same words twice or replacing words I mean to say with ones that look or sound similar. My fingers are just playing catch-up, like a personal assistant following my brain around and scribbling furious dictation.

But when I watch the words on the screen, I hear them twice. I hear them first in my head when they come to me, and again as my eyes read them on the screen. There’s an echo. Watching what I’m typing is like having that assistant quietly repeat everything I say right after I say it. It’s maddening.

So far I’ve been focusing on just losing the hunch. I still look at the keys, but I focus on keeping a soft tilt in my neck instead of rolling my whole back over. When I’m doing really well I’ll try to soften my focus and reenforce the fact that I don’t need to see the keys. This doesn’t seem to slow me down, but I keep unconsciously re-focusing my eyes and having to purposely bring the softness back.

In addition to the typing techniques, I looked up a few stretches designed for office workers who hunch over their keyboards. When I remember to do my stretches they seem to work well, but the effects are temporary and I always forget about them. I even tried putting the stretches on my task list at work, but I keep glossing over the task. At least I can soft-focus with some things.

The more research I do in my goal to correct my posture, the more I hear that general stretching and exercising are where I need to start. I’m still working on moving more, though it’s hard. I’ve had to resort to finding more challenges and schedules in order to keep myself motivated to exercise. Sometimes I look back with longing at my college days majoring in drama and dance, when exercise was a part of my grade and half my classes required me to wear yoga pants. I used to eat giant cinnamon rolls for breakfast without gaining any weight. I probably had terrible posture but I never noticed. My calves looked amazing. Sometimes I find my mind drifting off and I hear a familiar tune I’m finally starting to understand…

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On Racism and Being Wrong

Last year I spent a wonderful Sunday morning at an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Mobile, Alabama. The experience itself was interesting and enlightening for a number of reasons, but the one that keeps popping up in my head is realizing that I had approached the church with a deep and unknown racism.

Outside Big Zion - postedYou see I went to that particular church because I was chasing a story I’d been told. I’d seen it in movies time and time again. Forest Gump is always the first example that comes to mind. It’s the story that in the south there are these fantastic and full congregations made entirely of black people. And their preachers are passionate. And their parishioners are enthusiastic. And most importantly, their choirs are fantastic. I wanted to visit that place, the one I’d seen in movies. I wanted to hear the choir.

It hadn’t occurred to me that assuming that every predominately black church would automatically be filled with wonderful singers was racist. It is, by the way. It’s racist because I was taking a skin color and assigning an unrelated trait to it. I imagine I didn’t think of it this way because I was engaging in what’s often called “positive racism.” One example of positive racism you may have heard is the idea that Asian people are good at math. This feels like a harmless thought to have because it’s complimentary. We all wish we could be naturally good at math. But no matter the compliment, we are still stripping people of their identity as individuals and lumping them into a group defined by their race. And it quickly  turns into something overtly negative: Asian people who are bad at math are seen as failures to their race, and Asian people who are good at math receive no praise because it’s assumed their race is the cause.

I was envious of the black churches I saw in movies and longed to be in a place where people could be so passionate about their faith in a way that didn’t seem to attack others. I thought my assumptions were complimentary, so it never occurred to me that they were racist. That is, until I showed up and their choir was no different than choirs I’d seen at plenty of white churches. I felt a twinge of disappointment before I was overcome with shame. That moment of disappointment reminded me that disappointment can only come as a result of expectations, and the church had only failed to meet the expectations I had invented for them based on race.

A few years ago I watched a TED talk by Kathryn Shulz titled “On Being Wrong.” During the talk she asked audience members what it feels like to be wrong.

“Dreadful,” they told her. “Embarrassing.”

She told them that those are good answers, but they are answers to a different question. They are answers to the question, “What does it feel like to realize you’re wrong?” Feeling wrong, she explained, feels exactly like being right.

That’s how I felt walking into that church in Mobile. I didn’t feel racist. I had an abstract appreciation that we live in a racist society and that as a member of that society I will occasionally and unintentionally engage in acts of racism, but I didn’t think I was engaging in one at the time. In fact, I never feel like I’m currently engaging in acts of racism. Why? Because if I felt that way I would stop.

And that’s the key. There is a person I want to be. I try to be her everyday, and every day I fail at least a little. Because intellectually I know that I can’t possibly be right about everything, which means one day (hopefully), I’ll discover the ways in which I’m wrong. I will have a chance to change, and change is hard. Realizing you’re wrong feels so awful that sometimes you’ll fight to keep believing you’re right. You’ll twist the facts and make up excuses. Not to be malicious, but because change means admitting that all the reasoning you had to support your previous position was wrong. And you’ve been operating and living under that wrong reasoning every day of your life.

There are parts of the person I am right now that will be an embarrassment to the person I will become. It’s hard to think about, because admitting it means I’m already wrong and not changing. I’m already being racist and haven’t stopped. I’ve already twisted the facts and will continue to repeat them. Not only am I doing something horrible, but I’m not fixing it. My only saving grace is my ignorance. I don’t know which thoughts are the wrong ones. Yet.