My other 9 fingers are getting jealous of my right thumb

I got a new (used) toy for Christmas, an 8 gigabyte ipod touch. I am proud to say that I am using it to read the likes of  Carl Sandburg,  Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain. This is a wonderful way to pass a 45 minute bus ride to away games during basketball season in Iowa.

However, I am ashamed to say that I haven't written much at all since the addictive little UFO came to live in my breast pocket- and as you all know, I was once a blogaholic.

What can I do? Thumb exercises? There are free apps for training yourself to speed type- but the 2"x1" qwerty board is just not the same. I wonder if this is what Mike Royko felt like when he gave up his old cast iron Remington for an IBM PC.

Also, because I got the AOL instant-messaging app so that my wife can get a hold of me at school all day, my 8 year old niece thinks that I am an facebook and wants to chat with me. Since I don't reply, she thinks I'm a big meanie (not that I understand why her parents allow a second grader to have a facebook account).

While I'm at it, there is this app for LinkedIn, a professional networking site- but who do I REALLY need to network with anyway? I'm just a high school Art teacher. Should I keep that app? Do I network with other Art teachers? I don't really know any. Okay, one- and she wanted to Skype with me, but my wife got my ipod used on eBay so it doesn't have a camera, let alone a front-facing one. What exactly would I Skype with anyone about anyway?

I never wanted the Visaphone on the Jetsons, just the flying car. Of all the things from that show to come true- why the Visaphone? You'd think the vacuum-tube elevators would've been much more fun.

So I ask you, how do I make myself write again? Will I ever write again? Did I only THINK that it was a compulsion and an integral part of who I am? Have any of you found yourselves limiting your writing to 140 characters or less? Have peculiar symbols crept into what little writing you do do, like "@" & "#?" (by the way, I've been reading a lot by Rosanne Cash and Steve Martin too- but not her memoir or his novel- their tweets. I highly recommend them both. Don't get me wrong, Conan's okay and Corbet's a hoot, but BP is over and God's not everything he's cracked up to be.)

So what do you think? Do I just have to FORCE myself to sit down with the old laptop once in a while? Will that be the only way to get really WRITING again? Do you think maybe I should try writing letters? Would that do the trick? Do you think that might get the old juices going again?

Click "like" if you think I should. Share this with anyone you think may be going through the same problem I am. Or else I guess you could retweet it, whatever.