I was hunting through boxes under our house for an old folder when I stumbled across several crates filled with black Moleskine notebooks of various sizes. My analogue second brain from 1997 to about 2015. Thousands of handwritten pages.
Back then I’d sit for hours in cafes, watching people and scribbling down anything that caught my attention. Deep excavations of my own psyche, trying to understand what made me tick, what I was missing, what I wanted - probably too much of that. Meeting notes scattered between endless lists of things to do in the coming days, weeks, months. How much money was coming in? How much was still needed? All of it.
So I spent time under the house, flipping through those notebooks. What struck me was how much my handwriting had changed over the years. You can see exactly when I was stressed or distracted versus when I really took care with the letters. The first pages of each book were invariably more legible than the last. There was a period where I wrote with a thin pencil and my writing became so scratchy that even I can barely read it now. I want to shout at my 25-year-old self: “Write properly, mate!” But there was a reason for the mess, flimsy as it was - back then I wasn’t interested in preserving the content, just getting it out of my head. That part worked.
Messages from the past
This leads me to a loose series I want to start here in my little digital notebook - celebrating what it means to be human. Handwriting belongs in that conversation.
Nearly a year ago I started working on improving my handwriting. No particular reason. Just because. Not only that, I decided to relearn cursive from scratch. Like my kids did at school, I conquered each letter of the alphabet, upper and lower case, turning my already messy print into even messier cursive.
My goal is to develop flow with my hand so I can write each word without lifting the pen. Doesn’t work perfectly with letters like capital T or B, but most words in one continuous stroke. I’m deliberately taking time with this.
Individual script says plenty
It’s my completely individual handwriting and a mark of my humanity. Sure, a machine can do it better and faster, but machines just print. Maybe they could mimic my personal script, but that misses the point entirely. I want to take the time - no shortcuts - to develop my own slow handwriting.
I’m writing by hand much more now and it feels good. The slow movement of my hand also slows down my thoughts, which normally crash against my skull at full throttle. This way I reach different thoughts, maybe even deeper ones. One day a week I turn off all digital devices and read only paper books, making notes on paper. Feels very good indeed.
Particularly neat and slow
This probably violates every productivity principle, but I don’t want to be faster - I want to be deliberately slower. For me it’s celebrating being human. Especially because I still make mistakes in my handwriting. I get impatient and an N becomes an M. Or I forget a word entirely. Which tells me I need to write even slower.
I’m nowhere near where I want to be. My handwriting looks less scratchy than a year ago, by my standards anyway. I’ll just keep practising every day. When the mood strikes, I copy out poems by old authors. Or I compose my own texts. My big goal is to write cursive on unlined paper with my eyes closed - text that doesn’t wander across half the page and remains perfectly legible. That’ll probably take a few more years.
I imagine with enough practice I could get faster, but I don’t really want that. I enjoy guiding the pen slowly and executing the hooks on an N beautifully, without writing like a child. This brings me joy and satisfaction. For me it’s a sign of being human.
Machines do other things better.
This started life in German on reinergaertner.de, my blog since 1997. The English version was AI-assisted. My German-trained eyes may have missed a few things along the way. She’ll be right.