I learned not to take my feet for granted after breaking an ankle in five places as a teenager and then breaking my other foot (also in five place oddly enough) a few years back. But apparently I was taking my fingers for granted, given how much of my work revolves around typing – you just don’t think about them, you know?

So last night I’m not sure what happened, but as I was about to turn my lights out for the evening, I noticed I was bleeding (more than a little) from the tip of my right middle finger. The “funny” thing was that I didn’t feel anything at all, so I have no idea exactly when I did the damage.

Unfortunately it wasn’t just a paper cut or something – somehow I managed to carve out a nice little chunk of my finger, and rather deep. Kind of freaked me out.

I washed it off, bandaged it up, and went to bed. I tried typing this morning (bandage on), and it sucked to say the least. Now I have to keep the bandage off to type at all, and that makes it hurt a heck of a lot. Lovely.

Look. I’ve been bumped and bruised a lot. I’m anything but a dainty little girly girl type – I can take a lot worse. But it made me realize that I really do neglect my hands, which is terrible considering how vital they are to my work (at least until they finally perfect voice recognition software – but I won’t hold my breath on that being up to my standards any time soon).

And it made me wonder… do you do the same? Are you, as a writer, guilty of taking your hands for granted? What kinds of thoughts would be running through your mind if you suddenly couldn’t type for a day or more?

All I know is that I’m extremely happy that I got much of this week’s blogging (other than suffering though this post of course) finished yesterday, so it cut down the amount of typing I have ahead of me this week. Yay for being able to drip blog posts!