Handwriting

[nyxelestia]

I wrote this as practice for college essays. I use it now for pondering and reflection. The prompt:

Describe a personal habit that defines you as a person.

PLEASE NOTE, parts of this are still being used in my college statements. If any plagiarism searches for anything written by "RIDDHI SHILPI" have led you to this page, that this person is me, and I have not plagiarized my own work. If it is in bad judgment to put my statement up, please let me know and I will take it down.

If a plagiarism search for something written by someone other than "RIDDHI SHILPI" has led you here, they're thieving liars and you should drop-kick them out the door for stealing someone else's work and trying to pass it off as their own.

This is my answer.

A personal habit that defines me is handwriting. Not just for school or work or necessity, but for pleasure, and my own leisure. I am no Luddite, and I spend a lot of time writing on a computer - but often I will turn away from my keys and pick up my pen to write.

Handwriting is a dying art - more and more, people turn to bytes and screens over pen and paper, and there is already talk of how the skill is becoming obsolete. I am the first to admit I love technology and what it can offer - but I don't feel my handwriting has to be lost in the process. If handwriting is doomed to be the lost art, then I will be the lost artist.

My handwriting is as unique to me as everyone else's is to them. Yet despite the uniqueness, we are still able to share so much with each other through this 'dying art'. It was with this art form that civilizations were built, that societies were developed upon, that humans spread across vast distances in ancient times and could connect and share ideas and thoughts without ever having to meet.

When I write by my hand and this paper, it is a little bit of me that appears in this ink and on this woven fiber, that imprints itself in this world and becomes immortalized. My words now have a physical being, thoughts and ideas, and my words are a little part of me I can give and give and give again without running out...all with this 'dying art'. Even if this paper burns, the ashes are still here, my words buried within them, still here no matter what happens to me. My writing, this little piece of me, still has a place in this world, however scattered and distant it may be.

Maybe it will fade out, becoming a skill completely unnecessary, that is learned only for fun or curiosity and only used again as a party trick. But even if so, it will not have died - it cannot. If handwriting is an art form, then this is my art, and now that I have written this out with my own hand, in my own unique way, it has been immortalized. This piece of me now will exist even if I as a whole do not, and it will live on forever, more solid and substantial than digital bytes that can be lost with a click or a sound that fades in the air...all thanks to this 'dying art'.

And, here is a picture of my handwriting (the first paragraph of this essay to be exact) to go with this post:



Crossposted to nano_muse.

Comments

[katelinmr.livejournal.com]

wow, that was beautiful! I can't read your handwriting though! sorry :O But at least it's prettier than mine!

Brilliant how you said that you would be a lost artist if handwriting was to die out!

♥

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, most people can't read my handwriting while looking at the actual page, letalone a crappy picture of it. :) Even I have trouble reading my own handwriting...

[gossipgalmishi.livejournal.com]

Whoa! That handwriting looks so neat, nice and styled.

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)