January 24th, 2023

my apologies to you. i havent written much lately. to be fair, i havent had all that much to say.  most of my time of late is consumed with finding new ways to do old things.  all a necessity.  as you know, tomorrow will be the two week anniversary of me breaking my right arm. obviously, its still broken.   doesnt heal in two weeks tho im sure its better. tomorrow i go for another set of xrays to make sure its healing properly.

i am very proud of my one handed/left handed accomplishments.   some things are done similarly to normal, with a tiny tweak.  like, moving laundry from washer to dryer.  done the same way, but slower with more repetition i.e. smaller handfuls.   other things i have to re-engineer in my head first like working a can opener. that one took a second or two. but i figured it out! woohoo!  same thing with scissors. upsidedown and backwards works. 

most things just require a little forethought, like opening the door to the laundry room first then picking up and carrying in the dirty clothes. everything becomes a multistep process.  the smallest thing, say brushing your teeth, takes twice as long with many  more steps so patience is a must.  a sense of humour helps a lot.

i can make the bed, slowly, wash dishes!  ( the trick is trapping the dish in a corner of the sink first), wash my hair, dust, wash floors and many other things.  just takes me longer and involves more thought.  but the one thing i really wanted to do that i couldnt quite figure out, was take pictures with only my left hand.

first of all, i dont want to drop my camera. yikes thats terrifying to  consider.  so its obvious to me that i will be using the camera strap every second!  then there was, once again, the engineering of the process.   the shoot button is on the right side of the camera, as is the lever for telescoping the lens. it had become second nature to me to use it with my right hand. how to do it with my left however? hmmmm.  simple solution: turn the camera upsidedown!  awesome! now the button is on the bottom instead of the top but accessible to my left hand.  just needed to practice. 

like most everything, the results are improved with time and repetition.  i wandered around outside looking for something to practice on.  aha!  pretty courtyard flowers. i took 14 shots of the exact same thing. i didnt  change my position, the flowers did not move. just 14 shots in one spot. one came out
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clearly i needed a lot more practice.  i began shooting anything that was holding still. didnt matter if it was photo worthy or not. this was strictly for the purpose of getting comfortable with my camera being used a different way.

gradually, though my subject matter wasnt especially inspiring, it was taking fewer shots to get a clear and centered image. yay.  i was ready for a bigger challenge

  it rained sunday night so we woke to pretty raindrops. i find tiny things especially difficult to capture, even with both arms working so i knew id be deleting many attempts. i hoped for just one success. just one.  i was pleased with the results. i mean it can always be better but still... not bad for a one armed phptographer eh?
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yesterday, i did even better.  it took fewer tries to get these results.  yay!!

as pleased as i am with my progress, there are a few things that are so far impossible.  cannot tie my shoes for instance.  at least not yet.  havent figured out how to safely use a knife one handed so all cutting and vegetable chopping requires assistance.   cannot properly style my hair.  the best ive come up with so far is to dry a little, use the round brush, dry a little more. round brush etc. it is both tedious and time consuming. so i rarely bother.  and the one mystery that may be forever unsolved - i cannot hook a necklace or my bra!!  just aint happening solo.

so thats my life right now.  if you want to experiment and share my frustration try strapping your dominant arm to you body for a day and then let me know how that goes.  oh wait, you probably cannot do that one handed. heh.