We all have our moments.   
Not being a writer, I hesitate to call what I experience ‘writer’s block’
but there are times when I sit in front of a keyboard and it feels like a fight.   

I know this fight exists only within my mind.  I can endlessly remind myself of this.
“I am trying to control something.  I want what is otherwise.  I am judging my situation.”  
But simply defining my mind process doesn’t always (or immediately) relieve the blah feeling.  
No, I must apply the practice and I admit – sometimes, I get sidetracked.
 
So there I sit, suffering.  Question why I am doing what I am doing.
My head hangs and I stare at the keyboard, my mind full of all the hardships in my life.
Within moments it escalates from a lack of words to include the endless list of to-do’s and even past problems.

And then I see it.  I see the Control.
.   
And this is the beauty of the life – the bigger picture becomes clear, the grace of the perfect timing. 
I come around, I notice where I am
I am here and now, I am staring at a keyboard, I am thinking…

“Why does the Ctrl key sit down there in the bottom corner?”

Which becomes today’s entry.

Do we value control so much, we want it close to us? 
If your hands are near a keyboard right now, take a look…   
Apparently we want control so readily accessible we placed it on both the right And the left sides. 
Did the keyboard people know exactly what they were doing when they designed this layout?

And what about Esc?
Why does escape seem like a stretch?  Way up and off in to the left?

Or does Esc sit atop everything else for a reason? 
Reading from left to right, escape comes first while control is last. 
Clearly escape is significant with its “in the beginning” placement.  But despite all escape has going for it, we so often overlook it and rarely access it. 
A shame, really.

And isn’t it interesting that control is one of just a few keys important enough to occur twice?  
The others being Alt and Shift.

The Shift key. 
To change? 
(note – I’m not going to focus on Alt as it doesn’t work as well with my analogy – though I will point out that alternate could also be defined as change so…  I hear writers call this approach Creative License 🙂

Interesting that control is dwarfed by shift (aka change). 
Shift sits over control and is significantly larger, but do we pay any attention to this fact of reality?  
How much of our lives are spent trying to controlling things vs noticing change as more significant?

And then there is the usage – shift is semantic where ctrl is efficient.  
Who cares about grammatical correcTneSs or the odd $peci@l character when control is the key to The Shortcuts!
Control is undeniably useful when it comes to getting things done.
Consider the Copy and the Paste and especially the Undo. 
You can quickly Ctrl(F)ind or Italicize, Bold, and Underline for emphasis.  
We learn the shortcuts so our productivity increases but why do we value efficiency so much?
We are always rushing to get thngs done and be more productive. But why?

I guess we all adhere to some aspect of the ‘more is better’ & ‘better is good’ concepts. 
Productivity allows us to get on to the things we really want to do.  But what is that?  What is wrong with this here and now?

Take me and my writing this for example –
Control helps me more efficiently record the blithering ideas of my delusional mind so that… what?
I can go and do what I really want to do with my time?
I spend so much of my time and energy trying to get this done so I can finally enjoy that,
only to realize I have no idea what that is! 
I’m not even sure that exists! 
I can’t be alone in this insane pattern of Control helping me get somewhere that doesn’t exist, can I?

I work to control so much of my effort towards then,
I have forgotten how to flip the switch over to now.

This is the problem with control – it creates non-existent ideas like that and then.  
These become ideas that I desire but it turns out I have no idea what they actually are!  

This and Now are different from That and Then.
This and Now are what I have. 
This and Now are what is real. 
But to accept this and now, to realize them properly, requires a Shift away from Control, an Alt way of living.

Consider this for yourself – what is the Fn of Ctrl if it creates desire instead of eliminating it?
Why bother with shortcuts if they wont get me any closer to freedom?
Is a shortcut ever needed if I am already where I want to be?

If I’m not comfortable being here, being in my skin, being on earth – I have a problem. 
What does control really do for me (other than create problems)? 
Could there be something else?  A different key to my existence?

In a moment of clarity I notice the most prominent key is the Space. 

Ironically, my thumb was resting on it the whole time. 
It is centered.  Balanced.  Available from the left or right. 
It is the most prominent key but unassuming.  The only key with no marks or words.  Just emptiness. 
It is the most used key – its usage structures the entire creative process and yet it seems less valued than all the other keys that produce things.   

Isn’t that interesting.

Now, I suspect you are here to read something,
so I doubt you will accept a page of just space (ie nothingness)
but take a moment to realize the importance of space.
Space is the blank page on which all other things exist. 

Noticing space (and practicing space) provides balance and is the key to an optimized experience of working with things.    

ps – if you have just come across my writings – you have Entered about ½ way down and from the right.   
My keystrokes may not always make sense but I hope you get the < . >