OneAndOneIs2

A lot of people write blogs. Some just write it as a way of keeping friends up-to-date, some write because they're bored, some write because it makes them feel better.

And everyone knows that "it's good to talk" and that talking about your problems can help make them seem less bad.

But there's more to it than that.

When I was in schools on my PGCE, there were a few kids that had interesting gadgets that were like keyboards with little LCD screens. And sometimes full-on laptops. They could read and write, but they couldn't coherently write schoolwork-level stuff using a pen. They needed to type.

The reason given for this was down to the way the brain works. The left side is the rational, logical part, and controls the right side of the body. The right side is the fuzzy, emotional part, and controls the left.

Typing uses both hands to express an idea. That means that both halves of the brain have to be engaged and working together on a concept in order to get it transcribed. Sounds a bit of a strange idea, but it's proved very effective with some pupils with problems.

Research shows that men in particular have greater separation between right- and left-brain thinking. As a rule, a man is either thinking logically or emotionally. A woman is far more able to do both at the same time. I read somewhere that this is why males have an easier time learning to tell left and right, no idea how true that is.

So if you need to think logically about an emotional problem, or vice versa, you need to get both parts of the brain talking to each other. Writing about the problem so that other people can understand it not only makes it easier for you to understand it yourself, but the act of typing it up gets your brain focussed on the issue far more effectively than writing it with a pen, or even talking about it face-to-face with somebody.

And I say this from first-hand experience. I have another blog.

This blog (geekblog, oneandoneis2, call it what you will) I've always maintained, isn't an about-me blog. I don't write huge amounts of stuff about my personal life here. But a while ago, I felt a need to have somewhere to post about stuff that was bothering me. I've posted to it ever since, some times more than others.

It has few readers. If there are a dozen regular readers, I'd be very, very surprised. It gets no comments and a maximum of about 20 hits in a day.

There's only one person on the planet who knows where it is. And I only told her because I was worried that she might someday find it by accident, and only after she promised she wouldn't read it.

She reads it anyway, of course. Human nature, eh?

But aside from her, it's completely anonymous and going to remain so. But I spent some of today thinking about the "why" of blogging being a good self-therapy tool, so I thought I'd bring it up here. It's interesting stuff.