My hand me does bad

Ma main me fait mal... or in normal English, my hand hurts today because I used it intensively for like probably a total of five entire minutes.

I know what you're thinking and you should get your head out of the gutter because God is watching you read this very post and is already judging your for it... or maybe (singular-)they are judging me for this post. 

The reason why my hand hurts today is because I decided to do something that I do not regularly do anymore. Back in the day, when I was a young child (shout out to all old children?!),  I would always be caught with this thing in my hand (you're helpless...) that I believe was or is still called a pen. I would use it a lot in school, at home, in the park, everywhere, to write something down, kind of like I am doing it now on my blog, but less fast and using fewer fingers and even fewer hands. Although, now that I think about it, when I type on my phone, I actually use fewer fingers now! Wow, take that, school! 

I actually still remember one of my teachers complaining about the increasing use of computers by my generation and how "we will all forget how to write by hand and instead only be typing". I thought that that was the stupidest thing a boomer could have said because back then Facebook (or meta, MAGA, littlezucksocialmedia or whatever it is called now) didn't really exist and because it would have been completely impractical to walk around with your desktop computer. I mean sure, you could use a laptop, if you were so rich and fancy, but why would you want lug that heavy thing around with you(rself?) just to write down a grocery list or some note that you will immediately forget about?

Ummm... well, that aged like milk. Yummy! Now that phones exist and we can use our two little thumbs (or BUG THUNBS) to write down everything we need, there are times when I have not held a pen and written anything down by hand in weeks. Yes, weeks, not even days. This kind of reminds me of when I used to make fun of gen z wanting to get a text before getting a call or being unable to read an analog clock... Anyway, please do not call me (without texting me first).

I have been struggling to learn French for years now because I was not happy with the idea of moaning in public while I speak. I am not that scared of the grammar, the spelling is readable, the words are not easy to spell, but the nasal vowels are a nightmare for me. However, since plenty of languages use them and I could have almost always used French on some of my trips and vacations, I decided that this year I was going to learn some French! 

Anyway, now it is June 20th and I have barely done anything expect for listening to music and watching a video here and there. Since I can speak Romanian, English and a few words of Spanish, I can skip the actual learning part and dive into consuming content. Yes, this way of learning is annoying, time-consuming and very disappointing at times, but it has worked for me before, so here I am doing it again. Wait, did it even work, if I am doing it again? Anyway... 

I will spare you the boring details, but the tl;dr version of this is that I subscribed to a German magazine for French learning which contains lots of articles in French for different levels and my plan is to take time during the day to fight my way through some texts and write down some words. It also comes with some listening practice and some book with exercises. This way I can disconnect, learn some stuff, use my hand for good, (or bad because I will be complaining a lot in French once I'm fluent), and just have fun. I do not really do this as regularly as I would like to, but that is a story for another blogpost.

So yes, if you have read everything until now, you literally just read a post about me talking about the most basic thing as if it's one of the worst inconveniences and something out of this world. Congrats! You could have cleaned up, watered those plans or done something better with your time, like learning how to read an analog clock. Yes, and yes... I am embarrassed.