Dvorak: Not the Thrill I was Seeking

Sure I could get used to driving on the left side of the road, or sleeping during the day while staying awake at night.  But would it really help anything in the long run?  I learned the Dvorak keyboard layout.  I got frustrated at my inability to learn it faster.  I was so excited when I got up to 30 words per minute, but after sleeping and trying again, I still tried a garbled mix of Dvorak, QWERTY, and some utter foolishness in between.  Free writing was even more painful than taking typing races.  I could memorize a reflex when I saw a letter on the screen, but when translating from thoughts into letters, I wanted to rip the computer apart with my bare hands because the slowness was excruciating.  I finally switched my computer back to QWERTY, and there were relapses to Dvorak (such as typing "the" as "kjd"), but muscle memory goes back much farther than my Dvorak training.

I thought learning a new keyboard layout would be a good exercise in personal development.  It was.  It took typing at 12 - 20 words per minute to I realize what a good typist I normally am.  I did learn how to type without looking at the keyboard.  Previously that was a big slowdown.

One of the things that made the transition difficult was the iPhone.  Sure I can type QWERTY with my thumbs and not mess with the patterning of the rest of my fingers.  But seeing the layout daily was hindering my ability to forget the old and learn the new.  Apple has no plans for implementing a Dvorak layout on either the iPhone or iPad native interfaces.  I would think that since it's all virtual keys it wouldn't be so difficult compared to physical button changes.  I guess they are that lazy.

So I practiced the hell out of Dvorak, but ultimately I asked "why the hell am I doing this?"  The answer "because I can" was not a sufficient reason to continue the torturous exercise in bringing my communication to a screeching halt.  Why switch back to QWERTY?  Because I can type nearly as fast as I think, and it doesn't take thinking to type.  I like to do things my own way, but if that way does not make me better at things I can already do or make it possible for me to do more, then there's no point in changing.  Being different for the sake of being different is not enough.  There has to be something in it for me.  Maybe I would need to switch to Dvorak to type faster than 100 words per minute.  But I don't need to type that fast.  If there ever comes a time that I do, I will sequester myself away from the world for a month and dedicate myself to learning it with no distractions or Apple products.  In other words, that change had better be worth the effort to make it.