Why become Ambidextrous?

I've always wanted to be able to use both my hands to a similar capacity. Playing the piano made me realise that my left hand was falling behind quite a lot as a child, and while I no longer struggle as much playing melodies with my left, that skill hasn't transferred over to anything else.

Sure, there are repetitive tasks that my left hand is more used to than my right - holding onto jars when I try to open them, pressing the pump of my toothpaste... but I really want to be able to:

  • Draw Henna on my right hand with my left without it being the squiggliest thing ever.
  • Use my left hand to write and draw to give my right a break
  • Spend double the time doing a certain activity if my right gets repetitive strain injury
  • Cool party trick
  • Paint with two brushes at once with BOTH MY HANDS
  • Supposedly this kind of thing is good for your brain, and I don't want my thinking skills to become too bad when I get older

    • So, I'm going to commit to this to varying degrees each day, and hold myself accountable by updating progress on this website.

    Method

    If I've been wanting to do this for a while now, why haven't I done this way back when? I had no idea where you were meant to start. I don't remember learning to write or draw or use my hands for the first time at all.

    I've seen people buy these workbooks for toddlers - erasable pages where you trace letters, numbers and shapes. I think I'll invest in one if my method of drawing a guide on with highlighter and then going over it with a ballpoint on my left becomes too much. I can always just use a different colour ballpoint to reuse the pages.

    Other than that, moving onto not tracing, and then actually writing the shapes independently.

    Then writing sentences, making art etc? I want to try my best to make this as not-easy to get bored of as possible because my brain craves novelty and instant results all of the time.

    Progress Log

    As with all my pages, the order is chronological, with the top-most posts being the most recent. I will add a navigational section for every ten days when it becomes painful to scroll through.

    06/06 I did do some off-screen gaming here, but it was mostly inconsequential. I tried to speed-write and it didn't go so well. Today, I focused on trying to make my handwriting as nice as possible. I got quite impatient with it a lot of the time.

    Still an activity where I have to tense my entire body and stare and breathe heavily. The passages are from the official transcripts of the first (pilot) episode of Welcome to Nightvale.

    A square-lined piece of paper with a written passages: A friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale. [music] Hello listeners. To start things off, I’ve been asked to read to read this brief notice. The City Council announces the opening of a new dog park at the corner of Earl and Summerset, near the Ralphs. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park. People are not allowed in the dog park. It is possible you will see hooded figures in the dog park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the dog park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the dog park and especially do not look for any period of time at the hooded figures. The dog park will not harm you.

    06/01 Would have liked to make this more consistent, but it's been busy! I got some vertical snakebites and been braiding so among that and other things... Time has been lost. All good tho!

    In terms of the actual writing, I'm always impatient, so I've been writing as fast as I can pretty much. Still not very quick, but that's why the handwriting isn't improving as much! I think.

    A lined piece of paper with a written passages: Today, I ate some frozen blueberries. I fed Felix in the morning, so the isopods will be eating well. They are a lot less active than the springtails right now. I hope this will change - I miss them. Arrow pointing to text above, saying : 30th May? 06/01 First day of Pride and (underscored) the tumblr-sexyman polls. I liked to write with the BMA bones pen but it hurt because of the tensness I write with. The next paragraphs detail the instructions and text on the Self Adhesive Dressing (8cm x 6cm) packaging. As well as the ingredients list of Xixi Nori Egg Roll Egg Yolk Flavour.

    05/27 Okay, this seems like this is going to be an-every-two-days activity. I was a bit rushed today because I just try to get through lots of things really quickly because I have no patience.

    A lined piece of paper with a written passage: The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 1908. 1. The River Bank. The mole had been working very hard all morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was a small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang springcleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

    05/25 Yes, I missed yesterday, but in my defense, there is no defense. Today I did letters and some numbers and some sentences. I have to remind myself to blink when I'm doing this activity, I also cannot think at all when doing it, it's blissful silence back there.

    A lined piece of paper with large letters written in pastel green, a-z. These lowercase letters are traced over many times with blue, red, and green ink. Small blue letters are written to the right of these letters. There is also the entire alphabet written in blue ink in the corner with the numbers 0-42.

    The blue text on lined paper reads, 'how to read the landscape. a crash course in interpreting the landscape. Robert Yarham. Consultant Editor David Robinson. Bloomsbury. How to read the landscape is a practical introduction to looking at and appreciating different landforms around us. £9.99.

    05/23 I did numbers again, tracing them this time with a fineline pen. It doesn't surprise me that I find finelines easier, from the beginning, I've hated using ballpoints until I realised that I was pressing into the paper too hard that the ball wasn't actually rolling properly. Anyways, here's the line-up. Not the best out of the bunch, but scribbled a lot faster than yesterday. Can't believe sleeping on something means that you know it better. If that makes sense.

    Numbers 0 through 9 repeated twice in pink fineliner pen against grid paper.

    05/22/26 Today I did numbers. This is a temporary description because the day is not over, I just have to create this right now or I'll never do this ever.

    An A4 grid-lined page with pastel blue highlighter numbers from 1-9, and then 0, with black ballpoint pen tracing over the numbers. There are some small black numbers to the sides of the large blue numbers, and a row of black numbers at the top of the page.