If I am going to waste time, I may as well do it in whole sentences.

Some of us count; some of us write

I’ve always been better with numbers than words, far better.  I like organizing things. I like getting answers.  But here’s an interesting thing.

But counting is evidently not enough

When I work on long number-crunching projects, I doodle.  I cover pages and pages of scrap paper with odd words effectively just practising my hand-writing.

And I write with both hands.  My left hand is almost as good as my right.

I don’t do this when I am writing a lot.  Perhaps I worry then that I am reading too much, but I don’t doodle.

Counting cuts us off from the conversation

Another dreary thing is that when I am number-crunching, I have nothing to write about.  In so far as writing is a conversation, at least with a fictitious other, we have nothing to say when we are crunching numbers on confidential data on a project that will take weeks.

So I doodle.

Talk I must.  It’s human.

And now I write. Because if I am going to waste time, I may as well do it in whole sentences.