[AE.Personal] Mobile machinations.
Author's Note: I wrote this yesterday, got it formatted and ready to send out, and then apparently neglected to hit the confirm button when I tried to send it out, before going downstairs for dinner... leading to it being the first thing I saw when I woke my office computer up this morning. Oops! Today's mailbag entry is still forthcoming.
I am writing this newsletter on my phone as a test of how well I can do that, as my computer is occupied with a task that does not require my input or attention for the next thirty minutes or so.
I'm doing this because I have recently become aware of how many things that had become daunting to the point of seeming impossibility are working again, and I used to do quite a bit of writing like this, albeit with a physical keyboard.
The relative slowness and difficulty of using a swipe/touch keyboard compared to a physical one for me -- a very proficient touch-typist -- has left me feeling frustrated with my efforts to write on a phone ever since the ones with built-in thumb boards became passé, but after my newsletter yesterday where I wrote about how ADHD meds have changed the things I previously found to be helpful adaptations into cumbersome affectations, I found myself thinking about the reverse, as well.
That is, I wondered about which lifehacks and productivity tools and focus tricks I had written off as unworkable for me might now be within my reach?
I decided to try writing on my phone after reflecting that a good test of whether the barrier might have been neurochemical more than practical is if I could Do The Thing just fine when I had a bee in my bonnet about something, but found it imposing to the point of impossibility otherwise.
And while I have not been able to pick up my phone and string together my thoughts or a story since giving up on using the rare specialty phones that give physical keys, I have always been able to write Twitter threads on whatever on-screen touch boards were available, should a mood move me sufficiently.
So, I'm writing this on my phone to see how it goes. And if it goes well -- which, honestly, I think I might be reaching the extent of the experiment as I am about 300 words in and I can't imagine I'll have much more to say on the subject of how and why I am writing on my phone -- then I might try working on a story or some other larger prose piece.
And if the goes well, and it goes well in a way that is sustainable past the point of mere novelty, then that could be a game changer for me. I have never been a more prolific writer than I was in the days when my phones were self-contained, internet-connected word processors. All the time and money I have sunk into investigating ultracompact mobile computing solutions, all the energy I spend balancing a lapdesk and laptop when I'm sitting in the living room.... I have never found anything nearly as easy or seamless as just popping out my phone and opening a doc that's sitting on the cloud somewhere, that I can flit between writing on my phone and at my computer without having to think about it or do any kind of set-up or start-up routine each time.
On that note, though, I think it's time to pause the experiment for now... as of this paragraph, which takes me past the 500 word mark, I have switched back to my computer.
See, one thing about my current phone is that it's one I got after I decided to give up on writing on my phone as a phone to focus on mobile computing, so I prioritized processing power for desktop emulation. Which is to say, this is not the lightest phone I've ever owned. It's not the heaviest, but it's not the lightest. It's not uncomfortably heavy most of the time, but I'm only a few days out from an arm injury and while the pain has almost entirely subsided, everything I do with it costs me more spoons right now.
I think when I'm next looking at phones, my criteria will reflect a different blend of priorities. In the meantime, I do have a more lightweight device about the size and shape of a phone and with most of the capabilities of one, bar the "phone" part... my Android-powered music player is essentially a phone without a SIM card. I'm not going to break it out right this minute as I can feel that I took my arm strength right up to its limit, but I may well incorporate it into my writing to see if it's more comfortable, over a longer period of time, than my actual phone-phone.