Friday, 9 November 2012
Wrong Handed (NaBloPoMo #9)
My understanding is that most people are by nature right or left handed. It's a natural preference to use one over the other for particularly manual, dexterous tasks. The occasional person is ambidextrous and goes both ways but that's fairly unusual.
On Tuesday I woke up with a really painful shoulder. It's kind of inside the shoulder, behind the scapula. It hurts when I do most things including typing so a short post. But knitting, using a mouse, sewing with my right hand - those all make it worse. It is gradually easing but it's bloody annoying in the meantime.
So I've moved my mouse to my left at work and tonight I tried sewing some patchwork pieces together using the needle in my left hand. It was about 1/4 the speed of my right but not actually that hard - and I've found the same thing with my mouse at work. It all has me thinking - is it worth training yourself to use both equally? Or at least to use your non-dominant hand competently.
Of course you still have to hold the fabric with your other hand so sewing with your left doesn't really help. I just can't bear sitting here doing nothing though.
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4 comments:
I am 'naturally' right handed, but as a young child (6yrs old) I broke my arm and was in plaster from hand to shoulder for 12 weeks. I started carrying out day to day tasks with my left hand, probably without much thought (as is the way of a 6 yr old), and by the time the plaster came off I was a proficient left hander. Some 29 yrs later, I still use my left hand for certain tasks e.g. operating a mouse and holding my coffee mug/wine glass and make a point of periodically using it for other tasks. I think it's a useful skill, and one that you never know when you'll need, and good brain exercise too.
I am somewhat ambidextrous but can not write with my left hand. I hurt my right thumb a couple of years ago and now use my left hand for using a mouse and lots of other things because mouse use still causes my thumb to have problems. Its worth trying to use both hands where you can as when I first hurt the right one, it was a pain to do stuff.
certainly for RSI I know that they recommend swapping your mouse over from one side to the other e.g. have it on the left side in the mornings and right in afternoons. It takes some getting used to but is relatively do-able. Other tasks are harder to swap I find but if you have the will power to do it then I'm sure it would do all of us good.
Ouch... Hope it gets better soon.
As a left-hander, I tend to be fairly ambidextrous almost by accident (sewing machines, older irons and all the scissors in my childhood home being designed for righties and left-handed knitting never having made much sense); but all I need to do is cut a finger to realise how much I need both hands...
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