Welcome to post number one thousand. Dedicated to Bill Fishter, my dad.
I love writing, but that wasn’t always the case. There was a time in my early elementary years when I could not write my thoughts down to save my life. Nowadays, it’s called Dysgraphia. Back then, it was, “Oh my goodness gracious! Why on God’s green Earth is it taking you so long to write a simple book report!?!” Many many hours were spent dictating my book reports and science reports to my father. I was using a computer to write my reports long before most of my classmates, primarily to disguise the fact that while I did the talking, Dad did the writing.
My handwriting is still chicken scratch, unless I take the time to carefully form each letter. But I finally learned how to make the connection from my brain to the keyboard somewhere in middle school. It wasn’t until high school that I gained some speed, though to this day I look at my fingers when I type. I need to see the letters I’m hitting, rather than what comes out on the screen. But because of my dad, and the time he took to sit with me, to teach me how to think what I want to write, and eventually to type it out myself, I blog.
I was blogging before blogging. Inspired by that Doogie Howser show, I kept a password protected word perfect file on my old 386 back in high school. Until I lost the password, and then the computer fried. I maintained updates to my websites before the multitude of blogging platforms out there today where created. Anyone remember GreyMatter? Yea. I never used it because it seemed to complicated to me at the time. More complicated than constanly updating HTML code. Right. All I can say is thank goodness for WordPress! Blogging is so much easier now.
Interestingly enough, writing has become a catharsis. A cheap form of therapy. I often write better than I speak. All because my Dad was patient enough to help me with my book reports.
Thanks Dad.