One Dot At A Time

Think about the beauty of a single letter in the alphabet. Any letter. They are fascinating instruments, especially the handwritten ones. Precursors to bits and ancestors to bytes. The power that exists in each letter of the scribbled messages in our calendars or on our grocery lists is profound. These little devices capture information and create marvelous feats of communication like knowledge transfer, family history, life plans,  financial transactions, big decisions, safety instructions, and storytelling. 

Like most technological advances, writing likely started out as a crazy idea.

A fringe thinker in Mesopotamia put together a few wedge shapes to keep track of beer sales. In Egypt, people started using pictographic symbols called hieroglyphics. Hundreds of years later, the Phoenicians put together 22 “letters” and called it an alphabet. With the influence of several cultures and a thousand years, we find ourselves with ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.

These letters provide a way to capture our thoughts and ideas.

Each of them starts with a single dot. The point where the pencil hits the page. Dots lead to letters, letters produce words, words fill sentences, sentences build stories, books, articles, screenplays, research studies, and so on. 

Blank pages are intimidating, but there is zero anxiety in making a single dot. No expectations, just forward progress. Worry about defining it later.

Let it be something more than a missed opportunity … one dot at a time.