typing therapy

I have started relearning how to touch type. I could touch type before 2012, but not hugely fast as I hadn't been practising it properly for long. Then I had a stroke in December 2012, and that effed up a lot of things to do with movement and memory. Since then I've been using the 'whatever works while looking at the keyboard' method.

When it happened, I was paralysed down the right hand side of my body. Nothing worked at all. Gradually, I have regained most of the big stuff.

Unlike a lot of other skills which I had to teach my body to do from fresh to live relatively independently, touch typing never seemed to be one of those essential things that you have to be able to do. So, along with a lot of other things from that time that were erased from my muscle memory (my actual memory is another matter that I might tell you about another time) I never really bothered trying it seriously again until now.

Most of my movement on my right side is fully restored, but there are some oddities that I have never bothered trying that hard to mend as they don't really affect my quality of life in the same way. I still have a load of tiny muscle control issues and involuntary movement happening in my right hand's fingers, which affects my dexterity on that side. For example, I find doing up buttons on shirts has always been a slow, frustrating and fiddly thing, but this was easily sorted - I don't wear shirts much.

I also have less grip-strength settings available to me on the right hand. I put it like this - you probably don't think about how hard you are gripping things and just unconsciously adjust the grip strength to the job you're doing. Lets say you have anywhere between 0- 100% strength settings of grip, your body chooses whatever of those it needs without you thinking - if it needs 67.265%, that's what it does. I have 0, 25, 50 and 100%. That's it. Often I find I'm gripping something at 100% when it doesn't need to be. Chopping veg for example, my hand starts aching and I realise I'm gripping the knife like I'm trying to strangle it to death.

To relearn the touch-typing I have downloaded a Linux program called Klavaro which appears to be very simple, and in which I've just started the Basic level exercises. There is plenty of this sort of thing online, but the decision to keep it to an offline program was made to defend myself against me. Distraction would only be a new tab away in a browser, focus would be easily lost, and I do not need much to lose focus - ask any teacher who ever had me in a class, or any work manager who was holding a meeting with me in it.

When I am sat at the computer with my hands poised in the 'home' touch-typing position I have noticed odd stuff happening that is frustrating. The uncorrected stroke effects I haven't deliberately addressed soon became clear.

My left hand is fine, and I seem to be picking up that side and relearning easily enough. But the right hand is awkward. When I try to move any fingers independently of each other - particularly my middle and ring fingers - it's not always the finger that I thought I was moving that does move. Also, my thumb twitches and presses the space bar sometimes when I was attempting to move a finger.

The first exercises have all been learning the middle row of keyboard letters, and I have done something extremely unusual. I have not sped ahead and impatiently skipped to learning the next rows yet. Instead I  - by choice, and even if the program says I have got it accurately now and wants us to move on - have been choosing to repeat the first exercises, to try to get it not only sorted as far as the standard of knowing what keys to press reflexively, but also exercising my brain, nerves and muscles to actually press the right keys when I want.

It hasn't been straightforward, but I have stuck to it over the last three days so far. Also I have tried to keep practising when I'm writing other stuff, like blog posts for example.

After this morning's session I noticed that the frequency of involuntary thumb twitch space bar presses was well down. I foresee with the top and bottom rows, right hand movements also being very hard to start off with, but it appears I might have the determination to try to get it to work this time. And I have to remember that this is a form of therapy for me, as well as learning a skill.

Maybe, with some application and patience - these two simple things are not actually very simple for me - I'll be back to wearing shirts with buttons again.