For two years I’ve been using my smart-phone for nearly all of my writing. Small thoughts, small screen–it’s been a good fit. My smart-phone’s easy accessibility also syncs well with my unpredictable and fragile trains of thought. And though some people might claim I sometimes write too much about too little, I appreciate how helpful this tiny format has been for learning to think and write more economically. Those people should be thanking my phone.
Until six months ago I could read my phone’s tiny text without glasses. But the strain of it has finally caught up with me, and everything has become blurry. I have strong bifocal glasses now, which help a little. I also now keep cheap reading glasses scattered around the house. But even while wearing strong glasses, my eyes become so strained after just thirty minutes of writing that they won’t focus on anything at all for another thirty minutes. On top of problems with focus, I’m also experiencing problems with double and quadruple vision. As a professional photographer, that is especially frustrating.
I have surrendered! Thanks to a generous cash gift from my wife, Tami, I’ve been able to order a small, inexpensive notebook computer to take the place, mostly, of my smart-phone. It will be interesting to see if the quality of my writing changes with an increased screen size. At least I won’t have to constantly retype what my thumbs are too fat to get right on my phones’s tiny virtual keyboard. Now I just need to learn to work with a Windows computer and integrate it into a Mac household. I may also need to sew eleven-inch pockets to the backs of all my pants.
Aren’t you all glad I’m not a proctologist?

Nov. 26, 2011