You had a phase I guess, when you wrote those sharp strokes for block letters, or looped the last stroke on top of the words to turn the ‘l’s to ‘t’s in cursive. Is that a pre-2000 thing? I’d read English and Science notebooks of high school students back in grade school and I’d get distracted by the crisp and clean scribbles. or beautiful loops that were well thought of but definitely not overdone.

Then I’d look at my notes. Haha. Yeah. We’ll get there, I told myself.

So I’d write anything. Names. Words, Phrases. First in cursive, then in print. Repeat. Waste back pages of notebooks with scribbles of occupations and crushes’ names in pencil.

I moved to pens, of course, and pretty handwriting was still a goal. But for a while I particularly wanted my notes to be unreadable, partly because I started a diary of sorts and I want any snoop to have a hard time deciphering what I wrote. They looked like wavy lines with barely a loop and squiggle. Then my next one was a mad scratch of sharp curves for a while I thought I could write doctors’ prescription.

Here are some of the drafts I wrote for this entry. That’s a Pilot Prera CM with Pilot Blue Black ink, and a Platinum Riviere with Platinum Back ink.

That went well, until I realized some years later that I couldn’t read some my own handwriting.

So I changed my style. My handwriting became smaller. I discovered G-Tech and fineliners. I rediscovered fountain pens. Now I’m celebrating even the seemingly mundane act of handwriting.

It’s nice to see the recent interest in calligraphy and the somewhat revival of bullet journals. But aside from writing by hand as a hobby, have you scribbled something recently?

What was the last thing that you wrote with your hand? What pen did you use? Where did you write in on? Do you still use pens in class?

Do you still know how to write with your hand?