THE LONGEST COMMENT EVER POSTED ON STEEMIT

This post was originally going to be a comment, but the more I thought about it, the more it became a post in itself. In fact it may become five posts!

(I did another comment that became a post once before, but this one is longer)

This post by @in2itiveart got me thinking about a few things - https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/how-i-feel-being-an-artist-in-2017

TYPING

Some people on Steemit don't speak English and have to translate all their posts into English using a translation program.

I don't type very well and struggle with translating my ideas into typese, but I can write them down with a pen and paper easily, because handwriting is not a problem.

Last year some of my Steemit posts were typed up for me, which was awesome, but this year I have to type them all myself which I am not really into.

My theory on this, is that typing is left brain activity and I am almost exclusively right brained. I started out right brain dominant anyway and then suffered damage in the form of head injuries and later a brain tumour which messed up my left brain even more.

It is common for each brain hemisphere to control the opposite side of the body but in my case they actually don't cross over so I have very poor motor control on my left side.

I do almost all my computer use with my right hand, mainly just using my thumb and index finger - yes that includes typing!

I'm also not really able to type without staring at the keyboard (even after 20 years I still forget where the letters are). I also can barely think and type at the same time. When I write with a pen the ideas just flow onto the page but with a keyboard each line of type is slow and difficult.

I already have a list with more than 350 ideas for Steemit posts and the reason I don't post one every day is because I don't have the time or energy to type them out.

Right now I am realising that I need to get a solution to this, and I'm working on one right now, but this is the first time I've used it hence it is still a bit rough. I have a program called Dragon speech to type so in theory I can write my ideas down on paper and then read them out to Dragon and have it type them out.

It hasn't learned my voice yet, and I haven't learned to use it properly (it's very clever and quite complex), so there are mistakes from here to Africa. But if I can get this working, it will make a big difference.

My other idea for short comments is to just write them out with my graphics pen and post them as images

IMAGES

Every comment I've ever done on Steemit has included an image (over 2500 of them) It's the images I see instantly, but typing out comments to go with those images is the slow and difficult part.

Right brained people tend to think and remember the images first, and I don't mean those boring diagram type images that geeks include to be helpful on how to sites. I want psychedelic art and vivid photos of freaky shit.

For me, whether it's a post or a comment the images are the most important part. Most people on Steemit don't even post images on their comments but sometimes when I'm tired or in a hurry reading a post with hundreds of comments, I only look at the ones with images and I only vote for those ones.

And the main thing that determines whether I look at a post in the first place is the thumbnail image.

CHOICE

We don't always have a choice about what we do, whether it is being an artist or racing motorbikes. Last week I was watching an amazing documentary called "Closer to the edge" about racers in the Isle of Man TT.

When I was three my parents went to the Isle of Man and rode around it on their Triumph Tiger 650, so although I don't consciously remember I have actually been around the race circuit on a motorbike.

As a teenager I was obsessed with bicycles and motorbikes and raced both - my nickname was Wheels.

Watching those guys racing, but knowing how likely they are to be injured or killed and hearing and them saying things like "life is not a dress rehearsal" and "I don't have a choice" brought home to me that sometimes we don't have much choice about our destiny.

At the same time, watching those guys aged 25 doing that to themselves, with no fear, struck me that one day they may wake up aged 50 and realise they have been in pain from their injuries for half their lives and it will stay that way until they die. And suddenly feeling very mortal...

Here is a photo of me as a teenage bike freak

RELIGION

All that destiny stuff brings me to religion. Some people believe that we are guided by the "hand of God" and its taken me a lifetime to understand that they mean the same thing that I mean when I say destiny.

Ironically I was born with a loathing of religion. The first time I ever saw a church, aged four, I tore up the flowers from its front garden and threw rocks at it.

Later, by the age of 10, I was making sure the rocks broke windows and sending death threats (yes, hand written) to vicars.

Why? - My best theory based on muscle testing is that I was murdered by churches for being a heretic in six past lives. I know this sounds really fruit loops, but that's what tests every time, and I have no other explanation why anyone could be born hating religion that much as a child.

INTUITION

The post was originally inspired by one was about art and tuition.

Over a decade ago @kiwideb, who is a kinesiologist, taught me to muscle test.

I'm not into all complex theories that kinesiologists are into, and everything I do is just based on yes or no - I'm binary like a computer.

I started out lifting a dumbbell with my outstretched arm to muscle test and progressed to the point of gently pushing my index finger against my thumb.

Ultimately all that testing has arrived at a point where sometimes I know what the answer will be before I even test, and that is what deciding on pictures is like for me.

Yesterday I took 300 photos, and looking through them afterwards it took about 30 minutes to pick out 18 highlights. (It was easy because most of them were crap)

Later I'll edit those ones and again pick a handful of my favourites.

I really admire people who can spend all day doing an amazing painting. Although I have tried that myself I could never keep going with it because I just had to do something different.

And because I only do what I find easier, I have never valued it, so I didn't realise that the ability to instantly pick stuff is a skill in itself.

Now I'm going to start accepting that if I just choose a photo and run an effect on it, that is art too. Maybe its almost like a painting that took an artist all day because it took me a decade to arrive at the point of being able to instantly decide which photo and which filter!

Maybe doing what is easiest for us is our true destiny because we don't have a choice.

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