I mentioned that I was going to try following Neal Stephenson’s advice and learn to write in cursive. I stuck with it for almost a whole afternoon. Is that good? Practicing proper cursive — in my case, as directed by the Palmer Method — massively slowed down my writing. And the product looked like shit because I was bad at it. Then I realized the Palmer Method opens the rabbit hole of “whole arm movement,” where you use your arm to move the pen rather than your hand. Apparently this can take years of practice to master. I quickly grew skeptical that all this time and effort would pay off, especially since I mostly write on a computer. I also learned that I already use what’s called semi-cursive or hybrid handwriting, meaning that I connect most letters without lifting up the pen. Perhaps I’m already getting much of the benefit that Stephenson talks about when saying cursive is “far less tiring than printing one letter at a time.” Indeed, I rarely feel any strain when handwriting. So, it’s curtains for cursive. But I will try to practice semi-cursive more deliberately, noticing which letter connections cause me to lift up the pen and experimenting to see if I can keep it down.