I must confess…my middle name.

This morning, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across the I must confess linkup. The topic this week is middle names. So therefore, i must confess, my full name is Natalie Brooke Smith.

During the process of picking names for me, my parents decided on my first name, Natalie, because of when I was born. My birthday is during the festive season – December 30th. Going along with this Christmas theme, they decided that Natalie was a perfect name because it comes from the Latin natale domini which means ‘birthday of the Lord’. My birthday is less than a week after Christmas – so of course I needed a Christmas themed name!

But then the issue of my middle name came into question. The middlename they decided on is Brooke. I wish it had this fancy awesome story, but nope. My mum and maternal Grandmother liked the name Brooke, so there we have it. A middle name.

I often wonder about middle names though. I never use mine unless it’s legally binding paperwork and my full name is required. Most of the time it just stays in the background barely existing.

I wonder why some people have a middle name, some people have a few middle names, and others, like my dad, don’t have a middle name at all. What is with the middle name? Is it when parents can’t decide on one final name they like, so they decide to use the other name(s) as middle names? Or, in the case of my parents…the name that was liked, but didn’t fit in with the festive theme they wanted.

Is “tech” taking over?

I’m reading a book filled with a collection of newspaper opinion articles about all different topics. They range from views on friendship, the impact of technology and our willingness to read Fifty Shades of Grey in public and how that never would have happened in previous decades.

However, two particular pieces have stood out recently – one I read yesterday about the decline of letter writing, and a different piece today on handwriting and how the act of handwriting is disappearing.

The letter writing article discussed how snail mail letters have gone by the wayside, and nowadays people opt for text messaging, email or social media. After reading the piece, I got thinking about the last time I wrote a letter. However for me, the answer to that is recently…less than a fortnight ago, actually. I posted a parcel to someone and of course included a letter with the parcel contents. However, before that parcel, I realised I hadn’t written anyone a letter since October! I was staying with someone very dear to me at the time, and wrote her a letter telling her all the things I couldn’t verbalise. I gave it to her when I made her a morning cup of tea and told her I love her.

If letter writing can give special moments, just like that, I’m left pondering why we are leaving letter writing behind. Maybe it’s an inevitable life shift. Maybe it’s something else entirely, but that moment you hand someone a letter you wrote just for them is something that technology will never replicate.

Then my thoughts shifted to today’s article on handwriting in general. With the introduction, and popularity increase of computers, mobile devices and smartphones, people are grabbing paper and pen less when they need to jot things down.

It saddens me greatly to think that our handwriting is suffering because we’re more inclined to put notes in our phone or the calendar on our iPad than in a notebook. I’m a great believer in handwriting. For me, the creative process runs smoother and works better when those initial notes are scribbled down by hand.

Not only that, but it allows for a touch of personalisation. We all have our ways of handwriting and, in my opinion, those slight differences in style adds a sense of a personal touch to our writing. Something that typing can’t really do. Someone I went to uni with, she wrote all her notes with a hot pink felt tip pen. Whenever we saw some pink writing, we immediately knew exactly who’s it was! Someone else I know, if she’s writing someone’s name (in a card, for instance) she will make any letter with a closed round part (a, e, o) mainly, into a smiley face…putting eyes and a smile inside the round section of the letter. Both of these things are particular to these two ladies and we wouldn’t see their personal style if they didn’t use handwriting.

In school we work with a pen (or pencil) and paper. I wonder if we’ll see a day where 5 year olds aren’t learning handwriting in the classroom? I worry for the future of handwriting, but surely I can’t be the only one!