I went “shopping” in my stationery and art supply stash again, and this time used a Hahnemule Cappuccino sketchbook, a uni-ball sign pen, a Faber Castell PITT artist brush pen in light green (171), a Tombow ABT water based dual brush pen (I only used the brush side not the felt tip pen side) in light grey (cool grey 3 – N75), and a Caran d’Ache + Alfredo Haberli Fixpencil with a blue 2mm lead.
protest sketch
I used them all to draw the protest scene from this Saturday, using a photo I took during the protests. It was intensely hot and humid, and I went to the protests right after running a Dungeon World game at a small local tabletop roleplaying convention. With no art supplies on me, the best I could do was try and capture the scene to sketch later. When I was pulling things out to try out with this sketch, I decided to veer away from my comfort zone: I used tinted paper, a sign pen, mixed media, and an unusual colour. I like the result ā for a quick sketch it captures the energy of the moment well.
tools used.
I like the Hahnemule Cappuccino sketchbook. The paper is smooth but has a touch of grain to it that makes it work for pencils as well. It’s way too thin for wet media, but works great for brush pens, pencils, markers, etc.
My main sketching tool was the Uni Sign Pen. This is the first time I’ve used a sign pen for “serious” sketching, as I normally only use them for illustrations that I gift to friends’ kids. I like it – it has relatively little line variation, but on the other hand offers more control, and a good bold line. If you are dipping your toes into brush pens for sketching for the first time, this might be a good place to start to get a feel for the kind of thick lines these kinds of pens create.
The Faber-Castell PITT brush pen is a classic, one that I’ve used many times before in sketches. I’d love to say that they don’t disappoint, but like most soft and medium soft brush pens, the tip doesn’t last for long. They do come in lots of great colours and if you cap them they last much more than many other markers and brush pens in the market. They’re also waterproof, which is a bonus if you’re mixing them with wet media.
The Tombow dual brush pen is completely new to me, and I liked it enough to want to add it to my current sketching setup. It works well for quick shading (and shading and colour make sketches pop).
The Caran d’Ache + Alfredo Haberli Fixpencil… This is something that I want to properly review sometime in the future, so it’s been waiting on my desk for a while. For now I’ll just say that it did the job, although I have other pens and pencils that would have done the job better.
I also sketched our friend Joe during our weekly Zoom meeting, also on the Hahnemule Cappuccino and using the Uni Sign Pen. This was a very quick sketch, done it 2-3 minutes, and the sign pen does well with expressive lines.
Our friend Joe.
Now go rummage in your stationery/art supply stash and find something new to play with. It’s guaranteed to make you smile.
Never have I ever fallen in love with a standard pen faster than the Zebra G-450. Even the Uni-ball Signo RT 0.5 took a bit of time until it became my favourite, and I had much less experience with gel ink pens at the time. I liked the Zebra G-450 so much that after writing a few pages with it, I put in an order for two more packs, just so I’ll have backups and multiples of it.
So, what’s so special about this pen?
Zebra G-450
First of all, the Zebra G-450 looks like it was designed to be a prop in the Jason Bourne movies. It doesn’t have the “I’M A TACTICAL PEN, LOOK AT ALL THE WEAPON LIKE APPLICATIONS YOU CAN GET WITH ME” look of tactical pens. I find that look childish, and I find that it makes for very uncomfortable to write with pens. The G-450 is nothing like that: it’s sleek, features a durable and hefty-without-being-heavy brass body, knurling on the top, a very well designed rubber grip, and very Jason Bourne like fonts.
G-450
The G-450 has a well designed and solid clip, with a step down/cutout right in front of it that adds interest to the pen silhouette and makes it easier to clip onto things.
Step down, clip and fonts
I love the console like fonts in white, and I really love the grip. It isn’t mushy like a silicon grip, but it is softer than the pen body, and with the raised pattern on it, gives you a rock solid grip on the pen. The ring on top of the grip announces that this is gel pen, with a medium (0.7) tip. The pen cone has an extra small taper towards the tip, adding interest and perhaps also helping stabilize the refill. There’s no clicking, jiggling or noise from the tip as you write with the G-450.
Grip closeup.
The click mechanism is solid. The clicker (is it called that? let’s assume it is) stays extended at all times, even when the tip is engaged, and it has a very satisfying click. There’s a red jewel with Japanese writing in silver on the end cap, and it adds a nice and subtle splash of colour to the pen.
end-cap closeup
All this is wonderful, but it’s the refill that makes it all sing. It’s dark, super smooth, and it dries almost instantly. Yes, even on Stalogy paper, even on Rhodia and other fountain pen friendly paper, it just dries as soon as you write with it. This is a perfect lefty pen (I’m not a lefty) and it’s perfect for jotting things down in a rush. It will write a bold, clear line, and not smudge.
I sketched a local cafe with the Zebra G-450, on Stillman and Birn Alpha paper. I then “opened” up the lines using a waterbrush, as the the Zebra G-450’s fast drying refill isn’t waterproof (as is to be expected with gel ink pens). The result was a nice greyish purple that you can see on the coffee machine on the right. The coloured graphite was provided by the Derwent Inktense paint set, but that’s a review for a different day. Suffice to say that while the Zebra G-450 isn’t a sketching pen, it will work well as one in a pinch, as long as you like thick lines, and don’t mind it not being waterproof.
Rarely have I encountered a pen that I wholly like after just a day of use. I love the G-450’s aesthetic, its refill and its feel in the hand enough to immediately add it to my daily carry. I used Zebra’s wonderful G-301 pen daily for years, and I can see the G-450 easily replace it on merits of the refill alone. Sometimes a pen just ticks all the boxes for you, and this one clearly does for me. I recommend giving it a try if you possibly can. Who knows, maybe it will become a new favourite for you as well.
The intro post to this series is here, journaling for mental clarity is here, journaling through fear is here.
There are many journaling methods and planning methods that tell you to āempty your mind onto a page,ā or āperform a mind dumpā. This is usually a first step on the way to some other goal: planning your week, dealing with anxiety or finding a direction in life, etc. From GTD to Morning Pages everyone expects you to press a hidden button and just directly dump everything on your mind onto your journal.
The idea is that by emptying your mind onto a page you will be able to free more āprocessing powerā to more high level thinking and planning. Your mind will be free of noise, will be relieved of the need to track and remember things, and will be able to do what you really need it to do: make decisions, plan ahead, come up with new ideas, allow you to be creative.
This is great in theory, but in practice I find myself sitting at a desk with an empty page and and a pen, my mind buzzing with stuff, and the general instruction ājust write everything down!ā
Where to start? How do you pull out the first thread from all that tangled jumble? How do you focus on mind dumping and not reflexively go into the censoring, editing, sorting process?
How to Start Journaling to Clear Your Mind
Pick one of these prompts to start with. Iāll explain later why they work:
Time ā what were you doing just before you sat down to write? What do you do plan to right after you stop writing? When did you last look at your shoes? The first question is very easy to answer and works when you feel overwhelmed. The second is good for when youāre feeling aimless and are looking to start planning ahead. The third question is there to surprise your brain into being quiet for a second. Itās best for when things in your head are really noisy and chaotic.
Place ā Describe where youāre writing this, as if youāre writing it in a letter to a friend. Is there anything missing around you? Whatās the last national dish that you ate? The first prompt is the easiest, and works best when you feel overwhelmed. The second leads to planning ahead – stuff to buy, fix, etc. The third question is there, you guessed it, to take your mind by surprise. If youāre brain is full of screaming demons or chaos monkeys, this may help.
Media ā What did you read/watch/listen to last? Whatās the next thing you want to read/watch/listen to? What would your favourite movie look like if it was remade as an opera? This is the most fun of the bunch, and the reasoning is the same as in the Time and Place prompts so I wonāt repeat it.
Why This Works
First of all, it works for me, it may not work for you ā our brains are like that. From my experience the mind tends to follow the initial thread you gave it, so at least for a while you donāt have to stare at a blank page wondering what to write down. The first prompts are very easily answered for that exact reason. None of these prompts are inherently emotionally charged, so you can start writing without first dealing with your emotional state (you can ease into that later, or not). The third prompts are funny and weird (you can pick others like them for yourself), because when things get really bad itās useful to have them as a distraction. Trust me on that one.
How to Stay Focused on Mind Dumping
If youāre working on planning ahead, then the second question in each prompt category can help you get started, but in many cases thatās not the point of the mind dumping exercise. If thatās the case, keep a notepad or a piece of paper on the side and once something that looks like a task comes into your head, write that down there and not in your journal/morning pages. You can process it once youāre done writing.
How to Stop
Hereās something thatās also not always discussed: you need to go into these kinds of exercises with a hard stop in mind. Set a page limit, a time limit, or better ā set both and stop whichever limit you reach first. Your mind is constantly filling up with stuff, and if you donāt put a hard stop you could chase it forever, or tire yourself out with the first session or two and then never come back.
Mind dumping is a useful process that is best done often (daily or weekly). Itās hard to get into the habit if you find it hard to start, if you turn it into a task hunting chore, if you expect the process to be anything other than letting the junk in your brain get onto a page so that you can clear your head. Hopefully the prompts and tips here will help you get into the practice if you want to. If not, you could always just use them as regular journaling prompts. After all, who doesnāt want to see their favourite film remade into an opera?
Over the past 24 hours things have gotten very depressing and very scary here. To distract myself a little bit, I decided to start working on a new project: Going Shopping in My Stationery/Art Supply Stash. I have a lot of stuff. I donāt use enough of the stuff that I have, to the point where I donāt even remember what I have. As Iāve significantly cut down on buying new stationery and art supplies, Iāve decided this would be a good time to go āshoppingā for new things to use in whatever it is that I already have.
I bought this fancy looking A5 composition notebook from Choosing Keeping in London this April, after eyeing their gorgeous notebooks the last time that I was there.
Such a great looking notebook. Yes, the cover has gold foil on it.
The endpaper is also very good looking:
Front endpaperBack end paper with the Choosing Keeping bird sticker, and details on the notebook.
The paper is cream and unruled, and the edges of the paper are mottled brown. It is one of the best looking notebooks that I have:
I was planning on using it as a journal, but the paper was an utter disappointment. It is not fountain pen friendly, which really surprised me ā the ink spreads and feathers and bleeds through. I could have used a gel ink pen with this notebook, but it somehow seemed incongruous with how fancy and special (and expensive) the notebook is.
Ink test page
So I shelved it and I havenāt touched it in months, until today. My eye caught it as I was looking for a notebook to sketch in, and I remembered that the paper had some tooth and texture to it.
Closeup on the paper and the ink results.
Itās a soft, velvety kind of paper, which made me thing that it might work with pencil quite well. I also had some pencils I wanted to try out, so it seemed like a good opportunity to not let a fancy notebook go to waste.
Massive bleed-through
Enter the pencil that I wanted to try out most: the Eberhard Faber EFA 1000 vintage pencil in 2=B grade. I know, itās weird. I donāt get it either. 2 is supposed to be HB. I bought a box of these beauties at during my last visit at Present and Correct, and Iāve been wanting to use them since. Theyāre made in Germany, the lead is a B grade (slightly softer and darker than HB), very smooth and it retains its point surprisingly long for a soft pencil.
Eberhard Faberā¦ with the Star. I love everything about the design of this pencil and this box.
The pencil comes pre-sharpened, and has an orange and black body that looks a bit like the Staedtler Noris, but in orange instead of yellow. It has āGermanyā, āEFAā, āEberhard Faberā, āEFA 1000ā and ā2=Bā embossed on it silver foil. The fonts used look very futuristic and modern, which makes me think that this is a ā70ās pencil.
Very fetching design
The biggest issue with vintage pencils is the eraser, which is always dried up and completely unusable. For this reason I prefer vintage pencils that donāt have erasers, or better yet, those that have endcaps. Well the EFA 1000 gets lots of bonus points for not only having an endcap, but having a really good looking one. Itās also silver in colour, and it features three rings and a concave top.
The endcap
I then sat down to create this quick sketch of the latest round of pro-democracy protests. The pencil was a joy to use, and it worked very well on the paper. I was very happy with the feel of them both, and with the sketch results:
I added some colour with three Tombow Irojiten coloured pencils and a Koh-I-Noor brown Magic Pencil. The Tombow Itojiten was an utter disppointment. The green pencil crumbled twice, the others were mediocre at best. The Koh-I-Noor was a lot of fun, but brown works best with other coloured pencils layered on top, to give it some life.
Tools used here. Eberhard Faber EFA 1000, Tombow Irojiten, Koh-I-Noor Magic Pencil, Caran dāAche Design eraser
All in all this first attempt at shopping from my own stationery stash was a success. The EFA 1000 is staying on my desk, I learned things about the Tombow Irojiten (Iām glad I only have three Itojiten pencils and not a box of them), and I got to use a notebook that Iād thought would just gather dust. This is definitely something I will try to do again.
This is the second post in this series. You can find the intro here, and the first post here.
The title of this blog is somewhat ambiguous, and that’s on purpose. Like the famous “litany against fear” that appears in “Dune”, fear is something that you cannot avoid, the best you can do with it is let it wash over you, observe the lessons that it has to teach you, and be left standing stronger and wiser in the end.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain”.
Frank Herbert, Dune
I’m a cancer survivor, still living through the high risk of recurrence years of my remission. All my close family members have serious, life-threatening medical conditions. I live in a country where rockets are shot at me and my loved ones at regular intervals, where there’s always the threat of terrorism or just regular, run-of-the-mill violence. My government is methodically stripping me, my family and friends of rights and legal protections even as I write this. I spend my weekends (and lately my weekdays) going to protests where both police and counter-protesters have been regularly violent towards us. Being a human being these days is a fear-inducing thing, and I personally am living through a very fear-inducing life.
So it is not surprising that journaling when I am afraid, to work through that fear, has become a staple of my daily journaling habit. I have so many examples of working through it just in the past week, that I can break one out and actually write out an example of my journaling techniques in this case here. Note that my personal notes are messier, and that this is just what works for me, and even then, not all the time. Sometimes it just buys me some time, or eases the fear enough for me to gain some much needed perspective, or get on the phone with someone to talk it through. What I’ve written here is deeply personal, so if you comment, please be kind. It’s not easy to write about any of this.
When You’re Afraid of Breathing
The first and strongest symptoms relating to my cancer were shortness of breath (dyspnea in medical jargon). I’m in remission now, but still within the window where it’s not unlikely for my cancer to return (recurrence in medical jargon). During this time it’s up to me to notice possible recurrence indicating symptoms and flag them to my oncologist (cancer doctor in medical jargon). It’s only up to me: there are no scans, no blood tests, no physical exam that can indicate recurrence. It’s just me going to my doctor to talk about how I felt over the last three months. The main indicator will be the return of the shortness of breath. That same shortness of breath that is at the heart of my PTSD and anxiety attacks.
In short: I really, really don’t like not breathing.
Enter the local weather lately: a never ending heatwave with extreme temperatures and very high humidity that makes breathing outside difficult. Especially when running and walking to and back from protests.
The Fear Journaling Template
That’s not a great name, but that’s what I’ve got for now. I really recommend doing this with pen and paper, and feel free to destroy it once it’s done if you feel uncomfortable with anyone else accidentally reading it. Take out your journal or a loose piece of paper and write the following down:
Fear – write what you’re afraid of in a sentence. Be specific, honest, and don’t make it pretty. Don’t explain anything – just state your fear. Don’t work on more than one fear at once – do them one at a time.
Facts – write down any facts related to your fear. Be honest and thorough and be sure to include everything (both things that corroborate and contradict your fear). Make sure these are all facts and not perceptions, hunches or feelings.
Feelings – go into your feelings related to your fear: shame, anger, frustration, etc. Expand on what it’s making you feel. Don’t self censor – you’re writing this only for you.
Fixes – look at the Facts and Feelings you wrote down and try to come up with fixes that can help ease some of what you’re experiencing. What can you do to get through that frustrating and potentially explosive meeting? How can you get help with the relative that’s been hospitalized? Where can you look for tips on public speaking for the big presentation that you have to give? Again, don’t self-censor. This is just you writing ideas down on paper – it’s not a to-do list. You don’t have to do any of this.
What’s the best outcome – in a sentence write what’s the best possible outcome of the fear that you’re facing.
What’s the worst outcome – in a sentence write what’s the worst possible outcome of the fear that you’re facing. This is the scary part, but it’s worth doing. It’s worth seeing written down and not bouncing around in your head. Go as dark as your mind wants to take you.
What’s the outcome I would bet on – take a step back and read everything you’ve written so far. Consider who you are as a person, the facts you’ve written down, how you’re feeling about things right now, and the outcomes you’ve written down. Then write down the outcome you think is most likely to be realized – the outcome you would bet on. It will fall somewhere along the spectrum between your best and worst outcome, and chances are it will be closer to the best outcome than the worst one. If it is the worst one, then double down on the fixes, get as much help as you can, batten down the hatches and get as ready as you can to deal with its consequences.
When do I check-in next – give yourself a timeframe to return to these notes in – in a day, in a week or even in a few hours. This is both to help you get some distance from it all, and to let your mind feel OK with focusing on other things in the meantime.
Here’s an example of how this all works, from my own journal (warning: this gets pretty dark):
Fear – the shortness of breath that I’m feeling is an early warning that my cancer is back.
Facts – I’m finding it hard to breath outside lately. The heat index is extremely high: high temperatures and high humidity. The air quality index is moderate. I find it difficult but not impossible to exert myself under these conditions – I can still run in the early morning, and I can still walk to places if I need to. I can run normally in the gym, and I can breath normally when I’m inside with the AC on. The shortness of breath started about when the heat wave started. I’m in the 2 year high risk of recurrence window. My lungs aren’t functioning at 100% capacity. I haven’t gotten the results of my cardio-pulmonary exercise test yet.
Feelings – I don’t want to be a burden on my family or my doctor (being “the boy who cried wolf”). I’m terrified of my cancer returning. I’d feel even worse if it returned and I could have raised the flag sooner, and I didn’t because I wasn’t paying enough attention to my body. I would never forgive myself for that.
Fixes – accommodate the weather in my exertion levels and training. Move whatever you can indoors or into cooler hours. Check your breathing status in the gym. Call the hospital to get your CPET results and send them to your lung doctor.
What’s the best outcome – this is nothing, it’s just a result of this heatwave.
What’s the worst outcome – my dyspnea gets worse, and it is the cancer coming back for round 2.
What’s the outcome I would bet on – It’s likely just the weather coupled with my lung situation.
When to check in next – the heatwave will continue well into next week. Check back in next Saturday, after my long run.
We live in a tough world during a tough time. I hope that the ideas here help you out when dealing with whatever curveball life throws at you. The point is to gain more perspective, empathy and some tools when dealing with fear, and most importantly not let all that negativity bounce around in your head. Pen and paper are your friends here, and can help you get out of whatever fear you’re facing. It’s also nice looking back at old fears and realizing that most of them were never realized.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
First thing’s first: if you are looking for a writing pen, then the Majohn Q1 mini fountain pen is likely not for you. While you can purchase it with an extra-fine, fine or medium nib, it’s weird body shape would likely make it uncomfortable for long writing session, and as it’s an eyedropper filler, it’s designed to have a giant ink capacity, normally suitable for long writing sessions.
If, on the other hand, you are looking for a fountain pen to sketch with, the Majohn Q1 may be a very worthy addition to your kit.
The box. I love the “Feel the temperature of writing!” inscription on it.
I purchased the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen after seeing Paul Heaston use it in one of his sketches. “What is THAT?!” I asked, and immediately set out on getting one. This weird looking fountain pen reminded me of the Tombow Egg pen (google it. I’ll wait), which I always wanted and never got because I couldn’t afford one at the time. The Majohn Q1 appears to have almost the exact same design as the Tombow Egg, with a few minor details in the trim and molding of the grip section. I purchased mine on Amazon for $22.
What’s in the box: fountain pen with bent nib installed, eyedropper, and a spare medium nib.
The box the Majohn Q1 arrives in is good looking enough to gift someone. Inside there’s the pen with the Fude/bent nib installed, a spare medium nib (the bent nib is an “aftermarket” installation) and a glass eyedropper that you can use to fill the pen with. The pen itself comes installed with an o-ring so that it can safely be eyedroppered. I filled mine with De Atramentis Black Document ink, which is waterproof when dry.
I filled the pen only to 3/4 and still it holds a tremendous amount of ink, especially for such a small pen.
Now the Majohn Q1 is a very small pen, that holds a very, very large amount of ink. That’s why I was interested in it, as I thought that it would be a perfect fountain pen to add to my urban sketching kit. I currently use a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen for my urban sketching, and it’s a favourite among urban sketchers for the expressive, painterly lines it creates. It is, however, very long and pretty unwieldy: difficult to pack, and sometimes awkward to hold. Here are the Majohn Q1, a Lamy AL Star and a Sailor Fude pen laid next to each other, for size comparison:
As you can see, the Majohn Q1 is pocket pen sized in length, and very, very wide. It can’t be used unposted, as is to be expected with pocket pens, but once it’s posted, it just becomes an extra wide standard length fountain pen:
The point of this pen is the bent/Fude nib, so here it is, in all the different line widths it can create:
And here’s the Sailor Fude for comparison:
The Majohn Q1 offers much more line width control and consistency than the Sailor Fude, but you sacrifice some of the painterly quality and dynamism of the Sailor Fude to achieve that control.
The Majohn, like the Sailor, isn’t perfect in terms of gripping experience. While it’s much easier to grip the Majohn in a variety of different angles to get a variety of different lines, there’s a pretty pronounced step between the pen body and the grip section that can be uncomfortable if that’s where your fingers naturally land on. For me, I grasp the pen either closer to the nib, or not on the section at all but rather on the pen body. I’d recommend trying it out first, but for $22, it might be worth it just to buy the pen and try it out for a while.
Bent nib and grip section closeup.
Here’s a sketch of a friend’s border collies sketched with the Majohn. As you can see, it’s relatively easy to get both a good level of control with this pen, a lot of line variation, and some of that painterly quality to the line that makes it more interesting and expressive.
Majohn Q1 bent nib, De Atramentis Document Ink Black, Moleskine Pocket Watercolour notebook.
Here’s the complete sketch, just for fun:
Schmincke watercolours added.
If you’re at all interested in fountain pen sketching, and especially if you are an urban sketcher, I recommend giving the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen a try. It’s easier to control and to transport that a Sailor Fude, and holds a much larger ink capacity, which is great for long sketching sessions or when you need to block out a large section with ink. For such a low price you get quite a lot, and the learning curve is much less steep than with a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen. I don’t do calligraphy, but I assume that it could be worth a try for calligraphy as well, especially if you are looking for a travel friendly solution. And who knows, maybe you’ll get to feel the temperature of writing while using it…
I’ve been journaling for many years, and ever since I got sick, I’ve expanded my journaling to be much more than a daily log of the things I saw and did. Journaling has turned into a whole treasure trove of tools, and this series will run through them.
So what is journaling for mental clarity and perspective?
The idea starts with writing things down on paper, to add an additional layer of processing to them. Writing by hand is inherently slow, and requires you to focus on what you are doing.
Then do a mental check in: how busy and noisy is your mind right now? If it sounds like a train station during rush hour, the first part of journaling for mental clarity will be emptying your mind onto the page for as long as it takes for things to settle down a bit. Don’t judge what you write, how your handwriting looks, or even if it’s legible or not. This is just anxious noise. You need it out of your brain and that’s all for now.
This is hard to do, because you’ll automatically turn your editor on and try to edit stuff out, or edit things while you write them down. If it helps, write this bit on scrap bits of paper and immediately destroy them once things quiet down in your brain. You don’t need these thoughts, they aren’t the point of this aspect of your journaling. The point is just to achieve some level of calm inside your mind.
Once there’s some quiet up there, create 2-3 prompts for yourself, things that you will reflect upon daily, and will help you achieve more clarity and perspective into where you are in your life. Your goal with these prompts is to find patterns of things that work and don’t work for you in terms of helping you live the life that you want to live, and to discover and appreciate where you are in that given point in time.
I believe that it’s best if you create your own prompts, but to make this post more concrete and practical, here are the three prompts that I’ve settled on (after trial and error):
What excited me?
What drained me of energy?
What am I grateful for?
I answer these at the end of each day, as part of the structured part of my journal (the unstructured part is the daily log/mind dump that I do and will write about in a later post).
What excited me? – I answer this with a short list of things that made me feel good and energized. After doing this for a few days, you’ll see patterns emerge, and this will help you focus your time and energy on doing more of the things that make you feel good. In particularly chaotic days this prompt changes to What calmed me down? This is what made me make more time for my blog, lego building, using my pens, meeting and connecting with friends, at the expense of the things that emerged from the next prompt.
What drained me of energy? – Again, I answer these with a list of things that made me feel bad, sad, annoyed, frustrated, drained, etc. This is what made me cut down on reading the news to once a day, and only the headlines (I live in a chaotic country). It’s also what made me cut down on social media, and eventually delete Instagram and Threads from my phone (I’ve left Twitter long ago, and I barely go into facebook to catch up on event invites). It also made me mute a good number of WhatsApp groups. Yes, you may not be able to do that, but this isn’t the point. The point is find what isn’t working for you, and do your best to minimize or compensate for the pain that it causes. Mute and unfollow, change the interface you use, have someone to talk to after you’ve dealt with a source of frustration, etc.And sometimes it’s just helpful and comforting to see things written down.
What am I grateful for? – gratitude journaling isn’t new, and I know it sounds cliche and corny, but it works for me, and this is a list of my personal prompts. Feel free to pick something else (like “what did I see or read that made me happy?”). I’ve been using this since the day I got my cancer diagnosis, and it’s probably a bit different than your run-of-the-mill gratitude journaling. The point is to find the smallest, most mundane things that I’m grateful for. They have to be specific, and they have to be everyday, because I started using this as an anchor to give me perspective and appreciation for the very fleeting, very fragile lives we live here. So I’m not “grateful for my family”, I’m grateful for the great phone call we had today, or for the kind message they sent me, or for the way they worried about me when I went to the protest. I’m not grateful for my health, because I’m not 100% healthy, so there’s always something to grumble about, right? I am grateful that I felt generally good today, and was able to go on a run, and two long walks, despite the weather being terrible and my lungs working at their maximum and making me anxious. I’m trying to capture the delight I have in the everyday, because all of that, ALL OF THAT, was taken away from me in the middle of 2021 without a moment’s notice, and all of that can be taken away again. I have no illusions about my mortality and the mortality of my loved ones any more, and I realize that the humdrum of our daily lives will make me easily lose sight of that precious knowledge if I don’t take daily account of it.
I tried a whole list of prompts before I settled on these. If you are looking for some prompt inspiration, try watching this video. That’s where the first two or my prompts came from (the gratitude one predates them by about a year). Once you have 2-3 prompts, answer them every day for 2-3 weeks at least and you’ll start to see patterns emerge. Then it’s up to you to decide what to do about those patterns. The first thing I did was leave two WhatsApp groups that I was in, and mute a third one. I gradually worked up to deleting Instagram this week, and we’ll see how that goes. I now check it once a day on my browser, and it’s a terrible experience, but that’s the point. For the last few days I’ve stopped doom scrolling and gotten back to blogging and reading. Hopefully it will hold, and if not, I have the prompts to help me gain clarity and course correct if I want to.
I recently finished my Ghosts of Planners Past series, where I went over the various planning systems that Iāve used over the years, their pros and cons and why they all generally failed. Iām now starting a new series of posts, also related to how I actually use my various pens and notebooks, but this time with a different emphasis: it will be more āhow toā than āreviewā oriented.
What I talk about when I talk about journaling
Why do I journal? There are many reasons, and many kinds of journaling that I do, and so it is worth listing them down from the start to give you a rough idea of what Iām talking about when Iām talking about journaling.
Journaling for mental clarity
Journaling to empty my head from needless noise
Journaling to work out choices
Journaling to work out ideas
Journaling to work through fear, anger, procrastination, self-doubt
Journaling to let out steam in a safe place
Journaling for self improvement
Journaling to process the past
Journaling to plan the future
Journaling as reference and an external memory
These are all distinct kinds of journaling, but they are all tied together, and my plan is to address each kind in turn.
What this wonāt be about
My journals arenāt works of art. There are zero decorations on the page because I find them distracting. Journals for me are practical tools for personal use only ā not heirlooms to be shared with anyone, and not Instagram worthy in any way. If you enjoy decorating your journal pages, taking pictures of them and posting them on social media, thatās fine, of course. Itās just in no way the focus of this series. Iām only going to focus on the writing side of journaling, and not on your handwriting/calligraphy/drawing/decorating/designing skills. There are many other great sources for that, and I encourage you to go and find them if that interests you.
Now that we got all that out of the way, letās dive in with the first actual post in the series: Journaling for Mental Clarity.
I don’t normally celebrate this blog’s anniversary, but I decided to answer The Well Appointed Desk’s 21 Pen Questions and The Gentlemen Stationer’s 5 More Pen Questions to celebrate this year. Youāll see that my answers skew towards vintage pens and sket
#21PenQuestions
1: What is the pen they’ll have to pry out of your cold dead hands? My very first Parker 51 (an aerometric black one that’s worth very little but is still my favourite). I love writing with it, and it was such a significant purchase at the time. It was the first vintage pen that I bought, I got it from the Fountain Pen Network without having tried a Parker 51 or a gold nibbed pen or a vintage pen before, and it was so expensive for me at the time. I’m so glad that I took that leap of faith, and that it worked out so well.
My first ever Parker 51
2: What’s your guilty pleasure pen? My Nakaya Cigar Piccolo Negoro Kise Hon Kataji black/red with elastic flexible medium rhodium nib. It’s a joy to use but it was so expensive to purchase, I had to wait so long for the pen to be made and then I had to go release it from customs myself because they wouldn’t believe its price, so it never leaves my house. I bought it years ago from Mora Stylos in Paris.
My Nakaya
3: What’s the pen you wish existed? I’m curious about how a red Lamy 2000 would look. If it’s anything like I think it would then I want one.
4: What pen would you give to a new enthusiast? It depends on the person but either a Lamy Safari or a Pilot Metropolitan. If they were remotely interested in vintage pens, I’d have them try the magic that is the Parker 51. If they are an artist, then a Sailor Fude De Mannen with a bottle of De Atramentis Document ink.
5: What pen do you want to get along with but it just never clicked? Pocket pens, particularly the Kaweco series. I use them sparingly because it’s such a hassle to uncap and post them each time I want to use them. The same goes for the Schon Design Pocket 6. I have two of them, they’re great, but they’re too much of a hassle to use regularly.
6: What pen do you keep only because it’s pretty? I have some vintage pens that I daren’t use, the prime example being a retractable Waterman that I’m afraid to fill. You are supposed to pour the ink directly into where the nib is extracted from, and I can’t bring myself to do it.
Retractable vintage Waterman
7: What pen (or stationery product) did you buy because everyone else did? My worst pen ever, the remade Conklin Crescent filler. I bought it because people on the Fountain Pen Network went wild when they came out, and it is plasticky garbage that fell apart after one use, is horrible to fill and use, and was an utter waste of money. I’m now writing with a vintage Conklin crescent filler and A. The filling mechanism looks cool but isn’t practical (hard to fill, hard to clean), B. The Conklin flexy gold nib is amazing. C. It’s made of BCHR so it stinks to high heaven and has aged poorly. But I couldn’t care less because the nib is amazing.
8: What pen (or stationery product) is over your head or just baffles you? The plotter. It looks like a less well made Filofax for much more money, and I don’t get the hype. I also don’t get $400 steel nibbed cartridge-converter pens with over-hyped advertising. I don’t care how pretty the box or the site or the story is ā it’s a $250 pen, tops.
9: What pen (or stationery product) surprised you? The Stalogy 365 B6 notebook. I wasn’t expecting them to become my main journaling notebook, but I like the paper and the size. Also the Retro51 tornado, which I thought was a gift shop pen but turned out to be pretty good, even though I don’t love the refill.
10: What pen doesn’t really work for you but you keep it because it’s a collectible?
I have a few vintage lever filler fountain pens from Waterman and Parker that I rarely use because they’re such a hassle to fill and even more of a hassle to clean out.
Gorgeous lever fillers (and two propelling pencils) that I never fill. Retractable Waterman on the right.
11: What is your favorite sparkly pen (or ink)? I rarely use sparkly ink outside of Inkvent testing (I’m foolish enough to fill entire pens to test the ink instead of just dip testing them), and I have two sparkly pens only (both by Franklin Christoph) as I’m not a fan of the genre. That being said, between my Sedona Spa and Sparkling Rock I prefer the Sparkling Rock.
12: Which nib do you love — but hate the pen? Conklin Crescent filler. I also have some flex nibs on vintage button fillers (which I hate) that I keep for the nib alone.
13: What pen (or stationery product) gives you the willies? Noodler’s Bay State Blue. Because of the ink and because of the company.
14: What’s your favorite pen for long form writing? Parker 51, Lamy 2000 or a Pelikan with a fine nib. They’re all excellent writers, and the Lamy 2000 and Pelikan have giant ink capacities. The Parker 51 just makes me want to write more and more with it.
15: What pen (or stationery product) do you love in theory but not in practice? The traveler’s notebook. I love setting them up but I never use them because the format (both pocket and regular size) just doesn’t work for me. It’s too small and too narrow.
16: What pen (or stationery product) would you never let someone else use? I tend to not loan my pens out because they walk off my desk, to a point where I no longer keep any pens in the office (they all live in Sinclair bags and travel with me everywhere). If it’s at a pen gathering then I have no problem letting people try out my pens.
17: What pen (or stationery product) would you never use for yourself?
Lined notebooks where the lines don’t reach the end of the page. I loath them.
18: What pen (or stationery product) could you NOT bring yourself to buy? A Sailor King of Pen, because of the size and the price (and I’ve been eyeing one since they’ve been significantly cheaper). I actually tried one out and it felt ridiculous in my small hands.
19: What’s your favorite vintage pen? Parker pens, particularly the 51s but also the striped Vacumatics. But I have a hard time not buying every Parker 51 that crosses my path. I love the nibs, the sleek look, how reliable they are and how easy they are to fill and clean out.
20: What is your favorite EDC/pocket pen? Schon Design Patina faceted pocket 6. I love the design, the facets and the colours.
21: What’s the pen (or stationery product) that got away? Retro51 Pink Robots. I was a Pen Addict member when it came out but I didn’t get it in time as I was distracted by my mom’s cancer diagnosis and treatment at the time. When I got cancer I wanted it even more, but I haven’t been able to get one. If you’re reading this and you have one for sale for a reasonable price, let me know.
#5MorePenQuestions
Why do pens and stationery continue to play such an important role in your life, especially in an age when everything is supposed to be going paperless and digital? I started using fountain pens as a way of dealing with my carpal tunnel issues. Then I started sketching with them, and then I really got into vintage fountain pens. I always used paper and pens/pencils both for my sketches, and because I process and recall information much better on paper. Beyond the practicality of it all, I love my pens, pencils and notebooks as objects. I love their designs, the feel of using them, their history and the way they gather meaning as objects for me.
What do you view as the key benefit of writing by hand? I think best when I write by hand. I enjoy the physicality of the process, and the way that it helps me slow down, focus, see things more clearly. I also remember things best when I write them down, even if I don’t go back to reading my notes later on.
What is your favourite thing about the pen/stationery hobby? That it affords me an immediate connection with the past. Most of my family was wiped out in the Holocaust. I don’t have a family history. I don’t have heirlooms. Using vintage fountain pens, real survivors (in my eyes), brings me so much joy – particularly when I know that I’ve “rescued” them from being tossed away or gathering dust in a drawer. I love researching them, trying to imagine their past, wondering who their previous owners were, and what they were like. It’s part of why I have no problem buying vintage fountain pens with names engraved on them.
What is your least favourite thing about the pen/stationery hobby? The way that I’m treated as a woman in local fountain pen circles, and in vintage fountain pen circles. The assumption is that I don’t belong, and I must be buying a pen for my boyfriend or something, that I’m a “fake” fountain pen enthusiast. I tried joining the local fountain pen group but they were so hostile (yes, even after I gave out free bottles of fountain pen ink, showed my collection and proved my knowledge) that I left, never to return. It’s the same when I visit vintage fountain pen dealers for the first time, and I’ve gotten used to it, but it still annoys me.
If you could choose one combination of stationery items to use for the rest of your life, exclusively, what would those be and why? A Parker 51 Aerometric fountain pen with a fine or medium nib; Waterman Blue-Black/Mysterious Blue; Midori MD Cotton Paper (blank) in a pad or notepad. I think that the Parker 51 is self explanatory at this point š Waterman Blue-Black has a lot interesting shading, and even some teal in it, and some red sheen. It’s also very easy to clean out of pens, which is always a plus for me. The Midori MD Cotton Paper is very well behaved with fountain pens, and ink doesn’t take hours to dry on it. I also like its minimalistic aesthetic.
Writing at Large 