Looking them up.

Do you ever wonder how to do something even though you've known how to do it for years? I certainly do.  I'm not talking about things that aren't done very often and hence aren't practised as much as might be necessary to keep it as a tip-top skill, for example cooking a certain meal.  I know the technique to cooking a stir fry just as well as the next guy, but I'm sure I'd make more delicious meals if I made them every day, simply because I'd get more practice at it.

But that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about things that you do do every day, without even realising that you're doing them.  Then one day, when you have no reason to expect any extraordinary events unfolding, you notice that you're doing it.

You can't help but focus all of your attention onto this action no matter how mundane it is.
You become obsessed with it.
You notice the way other people do it and how their way is ever so slightly different to yours.
You begin to wonder - "which way is the right way?"


Now there are three options:

1. Carry out a study and see how most people do it.  Then if a significant majority do it a certain way it's probably right.  The example I was thinking of while I was writing this was how people hold a pen.  Most people hold a pen the same way but we all know someone who holds it between the wrong fingers or with their hand upside down or something even more crazy.  
2. See how a professional does it.  If you want to improve your breaststroke technique then watching the breaststroke world champion can't be the worst idea in the world.
3. Look it up online. By far the easiest for most 21st century folk.  There's a website for anything you can imagine and if you can find a few different websites telling you to do something in the same way then it's not too hard to convince yourself that that is how it should be done.  This example is very fresh in my mind as it was how to write a good blog.  Most of the websites I visited said the same things such as use a real language rather than internet speak or something similar in which many letters are missed out or replaced by numbers or punctuation marks.  Now that is something I didn't need to be told but I felt the example got my point across well.  

So there. 

Let me know if any of you have had the same experience of wanting to know the 'right' way to do something that you'd never had any trouble doing before, or if you've suddenly forgotten how to do something that you've been doing since childhood (lots of people say they occasionally forget how to walk for seemingly no reason). 
One last thing to say - I'm going to be starting another blog soon.  Won't be anything like this one.  Instead it will be a Fictional Blog.  I got the idea when I was researching for this one and thought it would be an interesting project. 

Anyway, it's time for the cinema so away I go.