Back Into the Habit

By H.G. Miller

(You'll forgive me if this little bit of ranting seems a bit forced. I'm out of practice.)

This is me typing on Windows 2000. Or the Millennium edition. Or whatever. It came with my new computer, which came in a box, which I have stuffed in my closet next to some winter coats that don't seem to be so useful in Southern California and a bottle of antifreeze that may never see light again.

That's pretty much all you need to know about the box.

I was telling you about me typing. You can't really see it, can you?

No, you just see these words. The result of my efforts on a keyboard that was probably manufactured half-a-world away by some machine that kicks out 20,000 of these things a day, never knowing what they will help to create.

Never caring.

I'm bad at tangents. Get used to it.

My roommate is just now learning to type. He's twenty-three and hunt-and-pecked his way through college. In an effort to increase his efficiency as graduate student, he has purchased one of those tutoring programs that comes on a shiny little disc.

Yes, I know what they're called, but isn't my way so much more interesting?

This program he has sings to him while he types. It has little digital hands that show him what his fingers should be doing and it makes colorful little sounds when he touches the keys incorrectly.

We should have something so nice for all of those people in the world who touch things incorrectly. (How about it ladies, you could be entertained and have better orgasms.)

Boy, was that joke horrible. As I said, I'm out of practice. We'll keep this in, though, just for the sake of posterity. Basically, I'm hoping to get better. A joke about bad masturbation habits seems like a good place to set my early standards. Right?

Okay, back to typing.

So, my roommate's being lulled along in the hot-shot world of typing and it got me to thinking about what first drove me to typing. To being any good at it, anyway. And no, it wasn't the teacher with the large mustache who made me stay after school while K-State played Tulane in the NCAA Basketball Tournament when I was a sophomore in high school.

Let's leave that bastard out of this.

He only gave me the tools.

No, the talent came from my love of writing. And I feel that I've lost some of that passion in the last year. The reasons why are many and complicated, and we don't need to get into that right now. Let's just focus on the positive. That I'm trying.

I'm trying to get back into the habits that made me feel like a "good" writer in college. Having a deadline once a week and putting some kind of product out there for people to see.

So, this is the first column for me in the new millennium. Stuck here on a web page I created with incredibly limited skill, for an audience of literally tens of people. Maybe that will grow.

Who knows.

Tell your friends.

Or don't.

At least I'm writing again.