I wore the N off my keyboard

I bought a new computer at the end of 2010. My old one was limping along, and I have nightmares about being shut down cold-turkey, so I shopped until I found the replacement I liked. At home I set up the new machine, eager to get my hands on the new Office 2010 and Windows 7 OS.

I hated the keyboard.

Could not type a line without a mistake. I knew there was some semblance of learning curve with a new keyboard, so I gave it a few days. My hands hurt. I couldn't think for worrying about my fingers hitting wrong letters. My patience is lengthy when writing a chapter, but short as a lightning spark when my technology hits a glitch.

So I put my old keyboard back in place. It's six years old. The N key is blank. Funny, but even though it's right there, next to the M and the B, like always, I find myself wondering which key it is. I slow down typing, even make typos (more than usual). Sometimes I'm mildly frustrated with it. Other times, I briefly consider swapping back to the new keyboard. Frankly, I'm thinking too hard over a piddly incidental issue.

We often let nonessential circumstances step in and interrupt our writing.

• The television in the background
• Traffic outside
• No music / wrong music / someone else's music down the hall
• Morning / evening / night
• Too much AC / not enough AC
• Dust on the furniture
• The wrong pen / mouse / chair
• No tea / the wrong tea
• Phone rings
• Internet is down
• The ding on the computer announcing email or Tweets
• The mall closes at nine
• Past bedtime

Maybe that's what you need to practice doing, instead of finding the proper hour, setting and method. Forget the right desk. Can you drop what you're doing at any time, and write? 

In reality, we need to be bold bad-asses and write through the interruptions, outside the minutiae, and beyond the excuses.  If we had the proper mindset, we'd write IN SPITE OF anything and everything.

Have a great weekend. What obstacle will you write IN SPITE OF?