Journaling Series: Journaling Through Fear

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.

Majohn Q1 Bent Nib Fude Fountain Pen Review

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.

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:

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…

Pro Democracy Protests Week 28

Journaling Series: Journaling for Mental Clarity

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.

Journaling Series: An Introduction

I recently finished my Ghosts of Planners Past series, where I went over the various planning systems that I’ve used over the years, their pros and cons and why they all generally failed. I’m 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 “how to” than “review” 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 I’m talking about when I’m 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 won’t be about

My journals aren’t 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 — 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, that’s fine, of course. It’s just in no way the focus of this series. I’m 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, let’s dive in with the first actual post in the series: Journaling for Mental Clarity.

21+5 Questions Answered to Celebrate 8 Years of Writing At Large

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. You’ll 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.

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.

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.

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 — 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 🙂 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.

Weekly Update: Reading and Pen Inking

Long time no update, so I decided that it’s about time to write one up.

Reading

I’ve been in a terrible reading rut, and I blame the book that I’m currently reading: “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk, a 912 (!) page historical epic about Jacob Frank and his followers. I’m halfway through, and I’ve decided to put it aside for now and train my brain to enjoy reading again with some lighter and more fun material.

The book itself is masterfully written and researched, with the narrative made out of a carefully pieced together mosaic of characters, voices and narrative styles. I just cannot handle the subject matter right now. As my rights are being taken away by religious, power hungry fanatics, I don’t want to spend my free time reading about religious, power hungry fanatics. It has reached a point where I balk at the idea of reading again, and that’s just not healthy. I hate giving up on books like that, especially good books, but if I want to actually read again and not just beat myself up for not reading, I’m going to have to start reading something else.

Health

I went through a CPET (Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing) last week and it was pretty intense. My lungs aren’t working well in high intensity since my chemo, and so a lung specialist sent me to get this test, to see whether my heart or my lungs are the issue.

It started with a spirometry test (which is a simple test done to check your lung capacity and performance), and then went on to the CPET itself. I was hooked up to an EKG and pre-test measurements were taken. Then I was fitted with a special mask and filter that recorded my air intake and CO2 levels. Finally I was put on a special stationary bike, attached to a blood pressure monitor and a blood oxygen level monitor, and told to pedal without stopping until I felt chest pain or was about to faint, or until I was told to stop. As the technician calmly told me, they have a lot of people fainting during this test, which is why they do it on a bike and not a treadmill. I said it was intense, right?

Anyway, I pedalled for my life, with the bike’s resistance being constantly raised, and me gradually getting out of breath. The point was to see why, so I didn’t stop until the technician stopped me, at which point a little over 10 minutes of constant intense exercise had gone by and I was drenched in sweat and panting. H

ere’s hoping that I get some useful insights from the results. In the meanwhile I’m still running 5 times a week, just not as fast as I would like.

Pens and Ink

I wrote most of my pens dry and filled in a new batch, this time consisting of mostly vintage pens. There are also two expensive pens in this rotation, a few old ink favourites and some completely new to me inks, and a weird selection of colours.

The Henry Simpole Jasmin Pen is one of the most expensive fountain pens I own, and one that doesn’t leave the house because I can never ever replace it. It’s a Conway Stewart button filler with a bouncy 18K gold nib, with silver overlay created by Henry for it. The late Henry’s birthday was on the 4th of July, and so to commemorate him and his work I inked this pen up. I chose the Kyo-iro ink because it’s an interesting dusky purple that I haven’t had enough time with. Like the Jasmine Pen (bought in Portobello Road market), I bought the ink in London (at Choosing Keeping).
The Lamy AL Star isn’t interesting, but the ink in it is new to me. The Graf von Faber-Castell Yozakura is a pale and shading pink that I normally would never have purchased, because it’s so light it’s almost unreadable. It was deeply discounted during the closeout of a local pen shop, and I came in late and had very little to buy to show my support. I probably should have inked a much wider nibbed pen with this, but I have a big bottle of it, so there’s always another time.
In the Mahjon Q1’s case the pen and nib are interesting, the nib is not. This is one of two pens (the other being the Sailor Fude in the end) which I inked solely for sketching purposes. It’s a weirdly shaped pocket eyedropper fountain pen that I bought with a fude (bent) nib. I’ll probably review it at some time in the future.
The Montblanc Victor Hugo was a pen that I bought at the end of last year, during my last visit to Mora Stylos. This was an impulse buy, something that would never have happened if not for the display that Montblanc used to sell this pen. I love the Notre Dame de Paris, I’ve visited her and sketched her many times, and my heart broke when she burnt down. She’s a survivor, and seeing this pen displayed in a diorama of the Notre Dame in all her white glory, I just had to buy it. The ink was a gift that Mr. Mora gave me with the pen.
Parker 51 pens. The cocoa and the teal were all purchases made in the local flea market, and the cocoa is part of a set (with a pencil) and the earliest of the bunch (from 1948, a first generation Aerometric). The teal was in pretty bad shape, and took me a while to flush out. The demonstrator Parker 51 is from Mora Stylos, has a gorgeous stub italic nib, and is likely one of the Argentinian, aftermarket demonstrators. The Parker 51 is my favourite pen, and I have a hard time not buying all of them.
The Pelikan M205 Petrol was a Black Friday purchase, and I haven’t inked it until now. The nib is great, the pen is great, and Iroshizuku Ama-Iro turquoise ink is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Such an optimistic, summery colour.
The Platinums include two Preppy’s that I’m trying out, after being disappointed with their durability in the past. The Plaisir is the pen that’s been inked the longest of the bunch.
The Sailor fude is filled with a new ink to me, the Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black. The ink was purchased in the same closeout sale as the pink Yozakura, and I’m planning on testing it out as a non-waterproof sketching ink.
I wrote the Conklin Lever filler on top dry just as I was planning this post, so it’s here for reference only. I purchased it at Mora Stylos, it’s from 1919 and it’s in user grade condition (cap discolouration, significant brassing, the imprint isn’t in perfect condition). The lever filling mechanism is infuriating to use, both for filling and for cleaning the pen, but there nib is magnificent. It’s a true flex nib, going from medium to triple broad with no effort or railroading, and it’s a joy to use. The fact that I enjoyed it so much, coupled with its tiny ink capacity, meant that it took me about a week to write it dry. I used Waterman Serenity Blue in it, and that ink once again proved its worth in troublesome vintage pens. It’s a great shade of blue that is very pen safe and super easy to clean out of pens (think the opposite to Bay State Blue). A must have for anyone dabbling in vintage pens IMHO.

The pens, from left to right, matching the order of the writing samples with an added guest on top

Other Stuff

I’m working on an adventure for a 30+ tabletop roleplaying convention at the end of the month. I may publish something here about how I write adventures for conventions.

In the meanwhile my D&D 5E game, set in a university like setting and a university town next to it, is progressing nicely. It’s the most complex campaign that I have ever written, but it’s wonderful to see the players rush around in this world, having the time of their lives exploring, interacting and trying to break stuff. D&D is a pure joy and a wonderful escape from the pretty dark reality we live in these days.

Speaking of both dark reality and things that cheer me up:

It’s week 27 of the pro-democracy protests, and we’re still showing up in numbers (that are growing again). It’s great seeing whole families show up, including the dogs, to say no to stripping the judicial branch of its oversight powers.
I’ve been sketching people’s dogs, and it’s a pure delight to try and capture their personality with each sketch. Plus, it’s making people happy, which is a good thing.
I’ve managed to help a few people get back to running, and that’s always a joy. Go get some exercise. Do something you enjoy, and even 10 minutes is enough. As Dr. Jen Gutner says, exercise is like finding money in the street: if you find $10 lying around, you’re not going to leave them there because they aren’t $100. Invest a little in yourself, because you’re worth taking 10 minutes a day for.

London Haul: Fountain Pens and Inks

I was about to write a post about my currently inked pens, when I realized that I hadn’t finished writing up and publishing this post. Such is the state of my blogging backlog that things have been languishing in it since May.

My April London-Paris trip was the first one I made where I had nowhere to buy vintage fountain pens from. Henry the Pen Man (Henry Simpole) had passed away, and Mora Stylos in Paris had closed his shop in the end of December 2022. Would I even buy any fountain pens?

The answer is of course, yes. None of these pens are rare or expensive, but they are fountain pens nonetheless.

The haul: Lamy Joy, Kaweco Sport, Platinum Preppy pens and Platinum ink cartridges, on top of much needed blotting paper.

I had one thing that was a “must buy” for this trip, and I almost didn’t find it: blotting paper. I’m using a Stalogy notebook as my journal these days, and with some juicy ink and nib combinations a piece of blotting paper is necessary. Alas, I was unable to find any in London: not in Choosing Keeping or in Present and Correct or in any bookstore, stationery store or antique/vintage/flea market that I looked in.

Here Paris came to my rescue, with its fabulous Latin Quarter stationery and art supply shops. I found blotting paper, and then got carried away and added a few cheap fountain pens and ink cartridges to my bag.

I already have a Lamy Joy, and they make for great sketching pens, but I wanted one in black and red and to try and sketch with the included 1.5 nib instead of automatically switching it out for a fine or extra fine. There’s a charm to sketches made with bold, thick lines, after all.

The Kaweco Sport in Blueberry was just an impulse buy, because I liked the colour and I have cartridges languishing around that I want to start using. The Platinum Preppies though, there’s a bit of a story there.
I bought a few Platinum Preppies in my very early days with fountain pens, and I purchased o-rings and silicon grease with them, intending to convert them to eye-dropper pens. They all cracked. Immediately. After the first use. One of them was even cracked before I used it.

I’m very gentle with my fountain pens, so I was very disappointed with the plastic quality on these, especially after I learned on the Fountain Pen Network that this was a common occurrence. Well, as I couldn’t care less for the ink cartridges supplied with this pens, I didn’t use them. For me the Platinum Preppy was trash.

Time passed and the Preppy kept getting recommended as a great beginner fountain pen, to my bafflement. It cracks, so why recommend it? Then again, I stopped seeing reports of cracked Preppies. Could Platinum have changed the plastic? Were they all using boring old Platinum blue cartridges and ignoring the cracks?

So when I saw a bunch of Preppies in a Paris art supply store (the wonderful Rougier & Plé) I decided to take a closer look. Wow! They come with purple ink now! And there’s a black ink one too… I decided to give them a try and add a few ink cartridges to my purchase too. The Platinum cartridges are proprietary ones, but I do have a Plaisir, so if all my Preppies crack, I can always use them with the metal-bodied Platinum Plaisir.

I also purchased two Sailor Studio inks at “Choosing Keeping” in London. The Sailor Studio 340 is a calm greyish powder blue and the 743 is an electric purply blue, and I love them both. These are expensive inks, and so they’re a rare treat for me, one that I indulge in rarely.

Ghosts of Planner’s Past: Bullet Journalling

I’ve been putting off writing this post because of all the planning systems I discussed, this Bullet Journalling (BuJo) is such a big topic and the system that I’ve used the most and the longest, apart from GTD. This will be the last post in this series as I’m planning on starting another series of posts on a different “how I use my notebooks” kind of topic. The previous posts are here: Chronodex, Weekly Planners, Daily Planners, Filofax, GTD and Friends.

So, Bullet Journalling was started by Ryder Carroll as a very utilitarian, relatively simple, glorified to do list combined with a calendar and some forward planning. At first glance it looked like another GTD system, and it’s clear that they share a common ancestry. This is the first video that Ryder Carroll published on the topic. He’s using a Moleskine squared large notebook here (he’ll switch to a Leuchtturm once he hears about the brand from the Pen Addict podcast, and he’ll land a collaboration deal with them later on), and there are no Instagram worthy spreads, metaphysical musings on how BuJo can transform you into a more enlightened human being, or attempts to upsell anything. It’s like the early days of Moleskinerie and 43folders posts – a guy finds a way to manage his to do list that works for him, and may work for others and so he shares it. Ryder Carroll knows how to explain complex things succinctly and clearly, and the video is beautifully made. It gained a lot of traction at the time, although it’s clear that Carroll prefers that you don’t watch that version of the BuJo explanation.

This is version of bullet journalling is what I started using, and what I still sort of use to this day. Why sort of use? Well, because the basis of the system is a daily to do list with a monthly calendar (and a monthly review), an index and a set of “collections” which are basically project to do lists. I still use the daily to do list and “collection” lists, so I sort of bullet journal. But I also sort of don’t – because none of this is new or unique. To do lists with checkboxes written out on notebooks, with project lists alongside them? There’s a monster list of those. You can’t get a book deal and a stationery collaboration based on that, right?

The official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal

Wrong. About a year passes from the original video, and Carroll signs a deal with Leuchtturm1917 and suddenly there’s an official Bullet Journal and a new video. Stuff gets added to the system. A future log. A whole set of new symbols instead of checkboxes. There’s an added aura of importance and self improvement sprinkled on top. This system will help you be a better person, not just a more productive one.

The included pamphlet – with a poem about BuJo no less – and sticker sheet

This is where the Bullet Journal system starts taking a problematic turn for me (and others, gathering by the comments to the videos). It starts becoming an Instagram thing. People spend hours making gorgeous, Instagram worthy monthly spreads. They spend money on templates, markers, stickers, and notebook bling for this. There’s an army of BuJo influencers. It’s no longer a “getting things done” system, it’s a “make pretty planner pages” system. Carroll inflates the system’s importance and “holistic” approach more and more. Out of curiosity I bought the second edition of the official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal. My PTSD makes planning a real struggle now, and I was at the point where I was willing to try anything. Well, for quite a bit of money you get an overly thick notebook full of Leuchtturm paper, which is tolerably useful with fountain pens. Don’t expect Tomoe River levels of fountain pen friendliness, as there is spreading, and it doesn’t show off the full properties of all your cool inks. Then again, it’s not really meant for that. There’s also an added 12 (!) page manual about the system and a large sheet of planner stickers (and three ribbon bookmarks). There’s also stuff printed on the end papers that shows you how you can divide the dot grid page using the supplied markings. If you create tables often, I guess it’s useful. What I mostly feel using it is that it’s a lot.

Have you ever tried to write an essay using Microsoft Word? Have you ever been able to do that without futzing with the formatting, the alignment, the spacing, etc? Word is a program created with printing in mind, and it shows. Writing applications like Scrivener supply you with full screen blank canvases that contain zero formatting prompts because that’s how you get the actual writing done. What the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal does is give you all the tools you need to distract yourself from actually planning your stuff as quickly and efficiently as possible so you can move on to get them done. It’s full of calls to design pages, and I had a hard time at first training my brain to ignore the noise that the notebook came with. Ignore the wide margins, the little division markings, the pages with titles, the stickers and the pamphlet.

But back to the Bullet Journal system itself: stripped of its self-importance and its need to preen for Likes and Favs, is it still useful as a planning system?

Let’s take a look at it part by part:

Index – I didn’t keep one. I think I might have tried this during the first month, but I gave up quickly on this. It’s too much hassle for very little gain. How many times a month do you actually need to find something in your notebook, and when do you not just flip through it? There were many GTD systems with indexes and indexing systems, and I never found the indexes useful.
Monthly log – I keep a version of this separately on a small “Rebel Plans” pad from the Well Appointed Desk. It contains a monthly calendar that’s shaped like a calendar (and not a list of days), with important days in the month circled in a different colour, with basic monthly goals and big monthly milestones/events marked on it. I keep it before my eyes constantly as I work, and so having it tucked away in a notebook doesn’t work for me. I also find listing on paper the events of the day for the entire month a waste of time. That’s what digital calendars are for, and they’re much better than paper ones for it.
Future log – a new invention made for the official bullet journal notebook. I tried using it and found it to be useless for me. If you want true long term goal tracking, I suggest you try the theme system journal or something of the kind.
Daily log – this is the heart of the system, and it works because it’s a to do list. See also my post about GTD. I fluctuate between using the dash-plus annotation system and simple checkboxes, but you can use whatever works for you, of course. The important part is, of course, defining your tasks properly – actionable, doable in a short amount of time, and something that you can and should be doing.
Reflections – these are just a rebranding of GTD reviews. These work well if you do them, but it’s been my experience that it’s very easy to stop doing them because who wants to review what you didn’t get to complete as planned?

So there’s good stuff in Bullet Journal if you are able to strip it down from its anxiety inducing beauty contest trends. The question is, will you be able to ignore all the Bullet Journal page design noise and make use of this as a pragmatic planning system, or will you get carried away and start decorating pages and comparing monthly spreads with people who do this for a living, as you buy yet another template and another BuJo perfect pen? I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.

Three ribbon bookmarks and divider markings closeup. You can also see the white margin all around the dot grid page.

Brown Paper Bag Sketch

This is a 5 minute sketch of Belle, the Australian sheepdog. It was done with a Sailor Fude 40 degree fountain pen and Graf Von Faber-Castell carbon black ink on a paper bag that held my sandwich.

Writing at Large

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Author: writingatlarge