26 Sep 2008 @ 14:00, by Enocia Joseph
I was speaking to my mother about learning to touch-type. She said after she finished school she attended a technical college where she was taught to touch-type on a manual typewriter. She said their teacher made them master particular keys before they moved on to the next and the next.
"At least you had the luxury of time to learn," I said. "I actually learned to touch-type in about four hours."
"That's amazing! How?"
"I borrowed a friend's typing manual and learned from there."
Years ago, during that era of the dark ages called BI (before Internet), I used to attend a creative writing class one evening a week. One evening while I was chatting to a friend at the course, I told her I wanted to learn to type properly. At the time I could type very fast with two fingers but I felt it was important to learn to touch-type. My friend said she had a typing manual she could lend me, which I could use to teach myself. The next week she brought the manual. I promised to return her manual the very next week. I mean, how hard can touch-typing be?
I had every intention of starting the course as soon as I went home but I procrastinated. I figured I had seven days to learn, which became six, then five, four, three, two, one, a few hours?...aargh! I went into a mad panic because I had to learn to touch-type that very afternoon so I could return my friend's manual later that evening.
I was whizzing through that manual like someone demented and in no time I'd learned to touch-type: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." When I returned my friend's manual, I told her I could now touch-type and she was dead impressed. I didn't tell her I had only done it at the last minute or I was typing as fast as a snail.
Learning to touch-type was the easy part; putting what I'd learned into practice was another matter. While I typed out my short stories, I was so painfully slow I was really tempted to revert to my old way of two finger typing, but I knew I had to persevere. Not long after, when I went to university, I was able to touch-type my essays. I still wasn't that fast because there was never any incentive to increase my speed. It was only after university when I registered with employment agencies, who were looking for a certain typing speed, that I was motivated to type faster.
I also came to realise that my typing speed increased in direct proportion to how I was feeling about myself.
After I'd been temping for a few years in the commercial and banking sector, I felt it was time to get experience in the legal field. One day I made an appointment to see two recruitment consultants specialising in that area. The first consultant I had an interview with didn't seem that enthusiastic, or we didn't hit it off. When I took the typing test, my speed was around 55 wpm (words per minute). An hour later I went to the next agency and I really enjoyed chatting to that consultant. I was feeling so good that when I took the typing test my typing speed was 90 wpm. The consultant was amazed and so was I. (It's amazing what the power of love can do!) I ended up temping with the agency that had inspired me the most.
I find learning to type is rather like the path of Love/the True Self. There has to be an incentive to not only follow that path, but to trust in Love no matter what. It's very tempting to revert to the old way of two finger typing when the going gets tough, but it's important to persevere.
Keep believing in Love and keep loving who you are. Love never fails.
Enocia
Related articles: What is Guidance?; Where the Heart Is; Second Nature; Practise Makes Perfect; Flying By the Seat of Your Pants; The Lost Art of Bone Idleness; Harmony; Long Live the King!; Constructive Criticism; The Path of Love; Specialist Subject - Love; Trusting in Love - Part 2; Practical Spirituality; The Point of No Return; Forever in a Moment; When Things Fall Apart
See also Stephen Hawking Unveils a "Time-Eating Clock"
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