These Hands. They are too Small!

Lately this past week has been pretty lame just in that I've had to wear my terribly unfashionable and uncute wrist brace, designed to keep my wrist in a "neutral position" and provide "support and compression." Needlessly said, anyone who sees me in it wonders if something terrible has happened and I have to joke around that my gimp hand is just being gimpy. It's actually not until recently that I've started to think about seeing a specialist and figuring something out "while I'm still young."

(Un)Fortunately, everything I want to do career-wise is very detail oriented. From sewing to knitting, painting and drawing, embroidery and screen printing-- everything is a strain on the wrist. As I type this, my keyboard is tilted backwards on the desk, raised up on some DVD cases. But, I'm happy to say that at least I'm not working at Starbucks anymore: it was terribly detrimental to my hands.

Its an interesting revelation to me that this is something that I need to care for and need to value and cherish, in the same way that an athlete has to be an excellent runner with great ankles or a music engineer has to keep his ear drums in tip top shape. I'm a smart, intellectual person (aha! I'd like to think, anyway)-- but my money makers are my hands. Without full control of my hands, everything I do that brings me joy and fulfillment would be nearly impossible. Unless I get to be awesome like the elephant who paints with his trunk. He doesn't have aposable thumbs-- if he can do it, so can I!

All joking aside, though, it's pitiful that in my mid-20s this is all ready something I have to think seriously about. Why are my hands so delicate? I have tiny wrists and long, slender fingers. Contorting my fingers into weird shapes to catch an embroidery needle for hours on end isn't the natural state of things. Kneading dough is hard sometimes, too. I suppose that then again, growing up in a digital age and typing isn't helping, either...