Thoughts on Paper

Is precise typing a lost art? Maybe it was never an art to begin with unless you were a secretary.

Maybe we just take typos for granted and have gotten so used to the convenience of computers and the ability to use the backspace key to correct mistakes.

There is a beauty in using a typewriter however that I have always felt a comfort in. A few years ago, Greg found an electric typewriter from around the late 1980s/early 1990s and asked if I wanted it. I took him up on the offer. We then saw a manual typewriter from around the late 1950s/early 1960s and got that one too. That was a pain to use, but I decided to start using it for a personal, typed journal. I ended up getting more often than not annoyed with how often the strikers would jam up with each other when typing too fast. Or that I would have to smack the keys hard to get results (which was a common complain of typewriters of that era.)

We ended up selling both of them well before we moved to Atlanta.

Fast forward to last weekend. Greg sees this beauty in a store:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is a Smith Corona Electra 210. I’m guessing it’s from the mid-to-late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. It’s hard to date because Smith Corona is notorious for not putting date tags on any of their products. The only thing we needed to get for it was the ribbon, which fortunately is easily found.

It works great! I have resumed my typed journal after almost 5 years. I am going to make something of this.

In case you are wondering, a typed journal might look like this:

There is more to the entry than that, I’m not going to show you everything.

Now you may be asking yourself: why in the world am I not just typing in this blog instead of doing this? That’s a good question.

A lot of stuff I want to put down on paper is really not fit for the darkest recesses of the interwebs. I don’t want anything salty that I way write to really come back and get me when I least expect it. The internet has more ears than a field of corn and once you put it out there, you’re never going to get it back.

And, by the way, White-Out correcting tape that is instantly dry really helps when you commit mistakes.