The Pen Addict 140/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	140
Title:	All Follow Up Extravaganza
Release Date:	February 2nd, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 140
Audio File:	Audio Episode 140
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 140
Length:	6464 min <br />1.067 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 140. This show is brought to you by lynda.com. Instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. For a 10-day free trial, visit lynda.com slash penaddict. Squarespace, start here, go anywhere, and Pen Chalet. Great deals on high-quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by The Pen Addict, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: What's up, man?

Myke Hurley: Hey, buddy. How you doing?

Brad Dowdy: Good. I'm doing a little dance in my chair.

Myke Hurley: Why is that?

Brad Dowdy: Can you picture that?

Myke Hurley: I can. I like to think about you dancing. Wait, no. Anyway, carry on.

Brad Dowdy: What does that visual look like?

Myke Hurley: It's nice. It is nice. It is very nice.

Brad Dowdy: Do you know why I'm dancing?

Myke Hurley: No, please tell me.

Kickstarter

Brad Dowdy: We have an awesome announcement to make.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we do. So, we did this Kickstarter, right, to get you over to the U.S.? I think I heard it in last week's episode. I don't know if you heard that episode. Did you hear that one?

Myke Hurley: That episode is like a fugue state for me, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, you're coming to the Atlanta Penn Show in April, and we did a Kickstarter to fly you over here, right? Mm-hmm. So, and it's gone so well, and we have some extra money, which we were hoping we might have, but you never know. So, we've added another guest to the live recording of the Penn Addict podcast in Atlanta in April, and we're going to have Miss Anna Reiner joining us, and she is here with us today on the Skype on my phone. Hey, Anna.

Anna Reiner: Hello.

Brad Dowdy: How's it going?

Anna Reiner: How are you?

Brad Dowdy: Great. Good. How are you?

Anna Reiner: I'm beside myself with excitement.

Brad Dowdy: Do you want to come to Atlanta with us and hang out and record the Penn Show?

Anna Reiner: Yes. Now I'm doing the happy dance. Mm-hmm.

None: This is like one of those things. I feel like we're doing some sort of special live talk show. It's like, and we're bringing the friend. We're bringing people in, flying in.

Anna Reiner: Check under your chair. Sure. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: One for you, and one for you, and one for you. So, yeah. So, we, when we did this episode last week, Myke, and, you know, saw the numbers, I think that night, we decided, okay, we're inviting Anna. I mean, I think it was pretty quick that we knew we were going to have some extra money, and we wanted to do, we weren't actually sure before. We didn't have any idea what we were going to do if we got extra money, but me and you were both like at the same time, let's invite Anna, and we're totally doing this.

Co-Host

Myke Hurley: Like, Anna, you are like the third co-host. Like, if there was ever one person who's like the third co-host of the show, it's you. You filled in for me. You know, you are like the spiritual co-host of the show. So, it only makes sense if we're going to have this big event that we would have you there with us.

Anna Reiner: Okay, now I'm getting all verklempt.

Brad Dowdy: Well, we want, I mean, I don't, it's like I wouldn't have it any other way. It feels so right. It's like not even funny. So, it's perfect.

Anna Reiner: You guys are so sweet.

Brad Dowdy: We are so glad to be able to do this, and we're so glad our listeners, you know, are supporting us and allowing us to do this because we couldn't do it without them. So, I wanted to say how excited I am and how glad I am it worked out for your schedule and how freaked out I was by how many people said, well, y'all should invite Anna to the pen show. And I'm like, ugh. We've already decided this. You're blowing our cover.

Anna Reiner: Absolutely.

Brad Dowdy: So, are your bags packed yet?

Anna Reiner: No, but I've been mentally making lists of which pens I'm going to take.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Well, good. Well, good. So, I'm glad you were at home when we decided to record this episode and wanted to get you on and announce it to the world with you on the show as well. So, we'll let you get back to drinking, but we wanted to get you on and tell you how excited we are that this is happening, and we can't wait.

Anna Reiner: Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, both of you. And I can't wait to see you guys in person. See you soon. All right.

Brad Dowdy: We can't either, and we will definitely have you on the show before the pen show so we can maybe do some pen show pregame talk.

Anna Reiner: Awesome. Sounds great.

Pen Show

Brad Dowdy: All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. I was pretty excited about that, Myke. This is fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, we got that extra funding, and we still have a little bit more. We got to figure out what else we're going to do, but we wanted to announce it on the podcast since we announced the Kickstarter. Last week, we talked about it, and tonight, I'll go to the project and make sure people who hadn't heard it on the podcast will know that some of their kindly, generous funds for our Kickstarter project are going to go to Anna joining us in Atlanta. So, it's great.

Myke Hurley: We are now up to $12,599. So, I want to give 12,599 thank yous to every single person who has backed the project. The project is still live, and I think it's live for an important reason. Like, as we talk about the show, you may decide that you want to purchase the video. Don't forget, the video of the live show, the audio will be as normal. So, you will hear me and Brad and Anna if we're going to set it up that way, because we haven't even decided how we're going to do the video, because the video is going to be in many different parts, right? So, we have the live show, but also there's going to be extra footage that will only be on the video, but there will still be an audio podcast as normal that will come out on that week. And we have actually worked out that it will be episode 150, which is a beautiful thing. So, that will still come out as normal, but if you want to get your hands on a video, you can still back it at the $10. We did sell out of the cases, which, and that and some other things has led to just a couple of points that I think we should maybe discuss for people that have asked questions. And it kind of, it goes into what we were talking about a little bit last week, but maybe this week we can, at least I can be a little bit more coherent than I was last week, because I was kind of a bit of a blubbering mess.

Myke Hurley: So, plans for the extra money, bringing in Anna is one of them, and we need to think about any effects that that might have to the video production budget, which me and Brad need to talk about, because we need to mic differently, we might need more cameras, etc. So, we need to think about that. And once we've got that squared away, one thing that I definitely want to do, and we will do, is me and Brad will buy a pen each that we will give away to a backer. So, we will buy something in the show, and we'll give away to one of the backers at random. Aside from that, we'll see how much left we've got, and we'll see what fun things we can do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and back to the video content, I'm working on some interview stuff. So, you know, hopefully, we'll see what comes out of that. It's still a work in progress, and we'll have more to come later. So, hopefully, you know, we're just not going to do video of Myke and I do the podcast. We're going to have some show stuff mixed in there with maybe some of the other people who are attending the show and some of the vendors that are friends of mine that I want to talk to and get on air. So, yeah, it'll be good.

Myke Hurley: But nothing that we're doing, again, still, we feel requires a request for more money than we've got. We've already got way more than we needed and or expected, and we'll probably still get a little bit more. So, there's kind of no need for stretch goals. And in the same sort of vein, like people have said, you know, why don't you guys make a t-shirt? We will do things like that anyway in the future. You know, we have a store at RelayFM, and in the future, there will be pen-out merchandise available. We don't need that for this project right now, but I really appreciate everybody wanting to give us money. You will be able to give us money in other ways in the future. But for this project, at this point, again, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about. I know at least I would feel like I was taking money that we didn't need, and that doesn't make me feel right. Right. Because this, for us, is to fund the live show. If we get more money than we need for the live show, then it's kind of not what the Kickstarter project's about. Right. Right. So, you've

Brad Dowdy: segued perfectly into my next topic. Can I get to it real quick? I would love to. So, you said, speaking of more money and it not feeling right, the most awesome eBay auction ever came up. And I got this sent to me in my email this week. It sounds like I've been drinking, but I just opened this link up and started laughing the moment I saw it. Someone is selling on eBay the infamous Visionaire Kickstarter fountain pen. So, right now, you can get this piece of history for $1.31. Is this you, Myke? Did you put your Visionaire up for sale? You know what I did

Myke Hurley: just realize? I could bring mine with me so you can finally try it. You know what? That's going to

Brad Dowdy: get, like, caught in customs and that's going to cause a huge delay. They're going to think it's a weapon or some other stuff. But whoever set this auction up, they... Let me read the item description. Surely one of the most infamous pens in recent memory, the Visionaire is a cheap pen that looks okay and costs a fair amount of money. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you search for the Visionaire Kickstarter page and watch the original backer video. Did you see that video? Wow. Now you want this pretty badly, don't you? Of course you do. The pen is in its original condition. Obviously, I haven't used it much as it's a terrible writing experience. It does work, but it has a pretty dry feed and I experience a lot of skipping. You'll be getting the felt-like drawstring bag and cardboard tube packaging. Comes with two of the original five ink cartridges in the cardboard Visionaire box. I'll see if I can dig up the original Kickstarter thank you note that came with the pen. If I do, that'll be included as well. If you're soon going to be having a child, I highly recommend this pen. You'll look like a fine citizen indeed as you whip out the Visionaire to sign the birth certificate. Sure, it might take a couple tries to get it going and it's likely to not write out your signature completely without skipping, but remember, this is what the instrument was specifically designed to do. You are not meant to write such an important thing quickly. Take your time and have patience. All great things are worth the effort.

Brad Dowdy: So...

Myke Hurley: That is a person after your heart.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this person must listen to the podcast or somehow. We must know who this is. And hopefully they will reveal themselves in my email inbox one of these days. But I just thought this was brilliant. I cracked up when I saw this, so it was fantastic.

Myke Hurley: I love that. That's a lot of fun. I hadn't seen that. I'm pleased that they've seen that now.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And so the same person that sent me that also asked me for something very cool. Um, this month is EncoWriMo. And what that is, we talked about it last year on the podcast. It's International Correspondence Writing Month. And I know Anna is a big fan. We should have had her on to continue to talk about this because she is heavily involved with EncoWriMo. And what it is, is you write one letter a day, every day in February and send it to someone else. Now, you and I have talked about this and I'll talk about me specifically. I still haven't found the time to commit to writing these letters. But what, um, the emailer asked me said, Hey, I'm putting together my calendar. Most everyone puts together a calendar for EncoWriMo. So they know every day who they're writing. Can I add you to my list? What's your address? I'd love to send you, you know, one of my letters for EncoWriMo in February. So I wanted to put that out there to all the listeners. If you're interested in, um, sending me a letter for your EncoWriMo for your February, I would be happy to receive them and you can get in touch and we'll go over those various ways. You probably know them by now if you're a listener at all, but, um, we'll cover that at the end of the episode, but I'm happy, happy, happy to, um, receive any EncoWriMo correspondence. So that's very cool. I got a few letters last year, Myke. I don't know if you did or didn't. I think I did. I think I did. Yeah. Yeah. But we had a few and, um, it is a really, really neat

Myke Hurley: thing to do. So there's that. So, um, this week's episode is actually an all follow-up show. Uh, yeah. Cause we had a ton of follow-up about our notebook discussion a couple of weeks ago. Uh, but I ruined the show last week, um, and couldn't talk. So we, we've saved it for this week. And of course, then we have the usual follow-up week on week. So I just want to take a quick break now. And then we have some more kind of standard show follow-up before we get into the notebook

Brad Dowdy: follow-up. Yeah. In the old follow-up extravaganza. We're actually two full weeks behind on any follow-up because we did Tony with everyday commentary and we didn't do any follow-up that episode. So

Myke Hurley: back, we are backlogged. Seriously backlogged. We're going to clean that out today, but I promise you it's going to be a fun one. It's already February. What are you waiting for? It's time to invest in yourself and start learning something new at lynda.com. Lynda.com is used by millions of people around the world and has over 3000 courses on topics like web development, photography, visual design, and business. And they've given listeners of the pen addict, the ability to sign up for a free day, 10 day trial. So you can get in and try it all out. A 10 day trial just for you. All of Linda's courses are taught by experts and they're having new courses added to the site every week. These courses cover all types of software, all types of hardware, but also like things like goals that you want to set or just about trying to help you. Maybe you want to, you maybe want to get a raise. So you want to learn some new skills, right? So you don't necessarily go in there and think, oh, I want to learn Photoshop. Of course you can learn Photoshop with lynda.com, but you can also go in and think like, I have some skills at work. I work in marketing and I want to get better at marketing. So why don't I take some time and learn stuff myself? And you can do that with lynda.com. There are courses and that sort of stuff. They can help you with that hobby you've always wanted. Maybe you want to learn photography. Maybe you want to learn Lightroom and Aperture photography programs, or maybe you want to learn how to take the best headshots. Maybe you want to learn a bit about lighting your photos. You can do all of this at lynda.com. There are courses on it all. You've got unlimited access once you sign up and you've got unlimited access during your 10 day trial period as well. You can view these tutorials on your tablets, your mobile devices, and your laptops and your desktops. They have apps for iOS and Android. And of course you can watch them on the web. And they're having these new courses added all the time. We've spoken about lynda a bunch. You should go check them out if you haven't already. It's a 10 day free trial. You don't have to sign up after that. You don't have to keep the account. You get those 10 days for free. What are you waiting for? Go invest in yourself. Sign up for that 10 day trial right now by visiting lynda.com slash penaddict. That's lynda.com slash penaddict. Go ahead. I challenge you to learn something new. Thank you so much lynda.com for their continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. They've been really great to us this year, Brad. They really have. Lynda are a great supporter of this show. They're really helping us out. So you should go and check

Brad Dowdy: them out if you haven't already. Yeah, they've been super. And they have podcasting stuff on there,

Myke Hurley: right? Like editing and things like that. Oh yeah, yeah. Loads. They have GarageBand and Logic, which are two programs that I say are great. But they also have just like podcasting courses. You know, so you can just go on and just like, so you can think a bit more about that stuff. It's

Graphite Pencils

Brad Dowdy: not all in the editing, you know? Quickly moving on to another podcast. Our friend Andy Wellflee of the Erasable podcast. Our friends that cover the graphite end of the spectrum, along with Tim and Johnny over on Erasable. Andy's got a second podcast now that he does with, um, I'm totally blanking, Will Fangi. Will Fangi. It's called Dot Grid Podcast. Probably a lot of y'all have heard about this, but I wanted to give them a shout out. I listened to the first episode. It was really good. Episode two's out now. So we'll have the link to the show notes for any of you that want to catch the Dot Grid Podcast. It's definitely a something right up all of our alley. And they're trying to, instead of just stick in the analog world, they're trying to kind of mesh between the, uh, analog and digital world and all the things that we like to mess around with. So that's cool. That Andy's got himself a sweet new job. He's got a new job. And it's got some sweet perks that he shares and makes me jealous like beer. I'm hopefully, I'm hopefully going to be able to spend some time even when I go, uh, out to WWDC. Oh, that'll be sweet. Yeah. That'll be a good plan. Um, another podcast that I want to make sure gets into the show notes is the most recent episode of Inquisitive

Myke Hurley: episode number 24. Yes. I can't believe I forgot about this. Yeah. I remembered it when you said,

Brad Dowdy: you said something earlier that triggered me and I said, I got to go get that link because that needs to be in the show notes. So our friend, Jim Kudal of Field Notes, among many other things, Kudal Partners, the deck, et cetera, had an awesome chat with Mr. Hurley. Um, anything you want to say

Myke Hurley: about that, Myke? Um, I said the second time I've spoken to Jim, I spoke to him on my previous show as well. Um, Command Space, which was on 5x5 and it was, we spoke about similar things, but all different stuff. So we spoke about the deck and we spoke about, uh, Field Notes, but you know, I didn't ask him the same question. So if you've heard the first one, you should listen to this one as well. Cause we spoke a bit about how it's quite interesting how Field Notes has grown. Um, and that was a real interesting thing. And we spoke about that. We spoke about, uh, some of the eBay stuff that's been happening recently. Um, and also something that I've been getting lots of, uh, tweets and, uh, cause I posted it in the Field Notes group as well. People have been very happy that I petitioned the, uh, arts and sciences edition size to Jim. Um, I'm, I'm just trying to pledge a case for everybody that likes them. I hope we're in for a shot. Um, yeah, I quite enjoyed that plug. Kudal is one of my most favorite people to interview. Um, both of those interviews that I've done with him are two of my most favorite interviews. Uh, he, he is incredible. And, and I think that we have a really good chat because we share, uh, very similar interests. Um, so I, I had an absolute blast talking to him. I wish I could talk to him every single week, but we just talk about Field Notes all the time. It's kind of like this show, actually. I'm saying, I'm like, you know, that's what this show is. We just talk about Field Notes every week.

Brad Dowdy: Um, but yeah, I get dirty email about that by the way. So thank you.

Myke Hurley: I don't even want to go down that road. Uh, so yeah, uh, go check it out if you haven't already. It's a great interview.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I hang pretty much on every word that Jim says this. That's a very rarely, rarely rewind episodes say, Oh, I think I missed exactly what he said there. I, I rewound that several times just to make sure I got all of, uh, Jim's goodness. And one of the things I wanted to point out is you got an awesome gift from one of our lists, one of our pen addict listeners that I didn't know had shown up yet. And you mentioned it in that

Myke Hurley: episode. You want to, uh, want to mention that real quick? Uh, Oh, Edith, uh, sent me a, a fire spotter with the tattoo in it. Yeah. And I was blown away. Um, I, yeah, that has got taken pride in place. That will never be used. The tattoo sit now sits inside the book. I've always wanted a fire spotter and just cannot believe that I own one now. And, and yeah, more than anything else, just the fact that she put the tattoo in like just serious. Like I thanked her over email. And then again, Edith, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Edith. That was awesome.

Fire Spotter Tattoo

Brad Dowdy: And she, she reached out to me. I thought, Oh, he is going to die when he gets this. So that was pretty cool. That was very cool. And then, um, did I cause you a problem on Instagram this morning? Are you, are you saying I'm, I'm being a tease? Yeah. You're, you're like a bully. You're,

Myke Hurley: you're basically like a bully to the whole internet. Um, and I don't know why you think it's okay to continue being the way that you are. I've been getting some of that too in my inbox. So Brad, Brad is, uh, on jury duty this week. Um, and he posted. Well, let's, let's, let's clarify.

Brad Dowdy: I am off the hook. Um, one day of service and I'm done. So yeah, I'm, I'm a free man.

Myke Hurley: Congratulations. I'm happy. Thank you. Thank you. Um, and you posted, uh, another shot of the folio too. There was one, you know, you got it open and you've got your little tiny, you have the best

Brad Dowdy: business cards in the world, by the way. Yeah. That's all. Thanks to Anna's husband at, uh, Skylab studios in Kansas city. And I need to do a blog post about those and they're freaking amazing. Like those things are amazing. Yeah. Skylab letterpress y'all check them out.

Myke Hurley: Like just, yeah. But like, so you've got, you've got it all laid out in there. Come on, daddy. When are we, when are we going to be able to get not cofolio? What's happening here?

Brad Dowdy: I wish I could tell you a date we're, we're, we're making this people, um, are asking, well, are you at least if you can't tell us anything, are you at least going to make it? We're going to make this case. It's probably going to be the summer. I mean, I just don't see it happening before then just with everything that we have planned from now up through April. So maybe, you know, may timeframe because we're going to do two folios. We're going to do this one that holds like the field note in memo book styles and the knock dot dash, uh, notebooks and index cards. And then we're going to do a little bit larger size and we're trying to, we've pretty much got this one nailed down. And then the larger size for like a five notebooks, like rhodia, rhodia pads, we're still working on that one. So we want to do them both at the same time. So work in progress. Hopefully this late spring would be the earliest, but it's most likely going to be summer. So, yep. But I had to tease it out because it was like the perfect, uh, the perfect kit for me to carry today. And, uh, I, I happily carried my orange man bag around. It was great.

Myke Hurley: So I am a tease and I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, at least you finally like you've, you've put something on it now. So, you know, we can all, we can all rest now knowing that one day we'll get our hands

Brad Dowdy: on them. Yes. So now I'm going to drop, uh, another tease. Here we go. Here we go. Cause you know, eat, eat, eat. Yeah. Go on. We have a busy episode this week. So, you know, just trying to catch up on

Myke Hurley: bits and bobs, as you would say, I would say, it's what I would say. Exactly. Um,

Esther Brook Pens

Brad Dowdy: but kind of the overhanging topic that a lot of people wanted me to talk about this week was my good friends at the Esther Brook pen company. And everyone's like, you talking about Esther Brook this week, you better be talking about Esther Brook this week. What's going on with Esther Brook? A lot of things happened today and I'm not ready to talk about it. I don't have time to put my brain around everything that I need to talk about this. Wow. Okay. So we'll maybe cover it next week, but I'm also delimited in the fact that I'm sick of talking about it. I don't want to give them the time of day at this point, but I guess also the people need to know. So, um, let's give

Myke Hurley: them the, the vision and the, and the scribble pen treatment, right? Next week is the last time. It's not going to be the last time. Okay. So we're just going to be sick about it then.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Cause something happened today that I'm not ready to talk about that. It will not be the last

Myke Hurley: time. All right, cool. I mean, I will talk about it forever. I love the scandals, but I know they

Brad Dowdy: upset you. I mean, they don't upset me. I just get, I get over. It's a waste of brain cells. You get sick of it. Cases. Yeah. You get sick of it. I hate wasting my time dealing with idiots. I will

Myke Hurley: tease. I will tease. Uh, cause we're not going to talk about it too much, but they have now a Kickstarter project, uh, which we'll talk about this. Yeah. This is, this is part of the whole deal. Just watch the video.

None: I know, I know me and Brad didn't like, we didn't put a lot into our video, but just go watch this

Brad Dowdy: video. It'll be in the show notes. So you haven't checked the Slack chat room for getting ready for the Atlanta pen show. Have you? No. Since we've okay. Check that. And, um, you'll understand, um, a little bit why this isn't going in a way anytime soon. So, man, that was a lot of followup. Uh, and, and I, uh, I ignored a lot of the followup. Oh my God, Brad. Wow. Okay. That's going to be interesting. Yeah. So I apologize. We're going to have to tease this for next week cause I'm not ready to talk about everything yet. Um, but needless to say, if you want, if you want the latest on Esther brook, you should turn in tune in next week. I'll be at liberty to discuss more things. So awesome. I'm excited. All right. You ready to get into some nuts and bolts about, uh, about why we're here today? Yeah, I am. Yeah. The episode we're going to be referring to from this point forward in this episode is episode number 137. So appropriately titled notebook emergency and this, the genesis of this, and if you haven't listened to it, you don't have to listen to that episode necessarily to understand what's getting ready to happen here. But I posted a picture when all of a sudden I realized I had five active notebooks that I was keeping different types of notes in and going, am I an idiot? Or is this like the normal thing to do? Or I was getting a little bit overwhelmed. I had some information here, some information there, you know, all these different notebooks. And then I brought it onto you, Myke, in the show and you kind of relayed like some of the same feelings, right? You're in the same boat of having multiple notebooks going at one time, right? Oh, always, always. Yeah. So you have several, you know, one notebook carry has like one topic and, you know, a few other topics here. So we did that episode and I thought I'm weird. I'm the crazy one. And as I mentioned in a couple episodes ago, after this episode, I've never gotten more feedback for a single episode in my life than that notebook emergency episode. And Myke, me and you, we are on the low end of the totem pole as far as the number of notebooks in use. And there's no way I got everyone's feedback in on this episode coming up, but I picked out a bunch of them. And so many different people wrote in and followed up on that episode that I thought we would cover it and kind of talk about what other people do with their notebooks and kind of have a discussion around that and see how sane we're actually, we actually are. And our listeners are just the insane ones. So the first one is, is from Kim. She says, hi, hi, Brad and Myke, some feedback on the number of active notebooks. She said, if you're interested, I have the following active notebooks pretty much all the time. So number one is a daily planner, Hobonichi for this year. Number two, a daily notebook kept at the office all the time. Master size. Do you know what the master size Leuchtturm 1917 is, Myke? Nope. This is a killer product. You're gonna have to put this one in the show notes. I do not own one of these, but Leuchtturm makes a size called master. They should just call it monster. It is that big. I don't know the dimensions. Maybe you can look, look it up while

Myke Hurley: I'm babbling. Yes. What do you want it in millimeters? It doesn't matter. Okay. It's 225

Brad Dowdy: by 315 millimeters. Yeah. So it's like a four bigger than eight and a half by 11. It's, it's gigantic. It's beautiful looking. So that's number two for Kim. Number three, field notes for work notes when on business travel, which for her is a frequent, frequent thing. Number four, moleskin large journal with soft cover for Hungarian language studies. Maybe you can go see Kim when you go to Hungary. Right. And now aren't you going to Hungary? No. Romania. Oh, Romania. Sorry. Isn't, aren't those the same? Stupid Americans. Stupid Americans. Another field notes with notes and measurements for apartment furnishing project. And then what will be an extremely popular choice. Notebook number six is an A5 size TARDIS themed notebook from the BBC merchandise shop for long form journaling on weekends. So she has a group of notebooks that live in a location. So the daily notebook kept at the office and the TARDIS notebook is the journaling notebook for weekends. And then another group of notebooks that are mobile. So there's a group of notebooks that are on the go, the planner and both field notes. And then the fourth notebook is for learning. So she has a really, really well-defined breakdown that makes me look like a lost cause because I'm not sure what's in each notebook half the time. I just kind of get on a whim and just start writing these things down. So are you able to keep your notebook separated for like their intended use? Because I have a lot of

Myke Hurley: crossover and that's causing me some problems. I have minimal crossover. Um, but if I have, because if I have to cross over, I feel uncomfortable.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I feel guilty when I do, but then I just end up doing it anyway. And then I keep telling myself, you know, I'll find that note later. And a lot of times I'm going back through my stack of finished notebooks, searching for that note that I really wanted. Um, because I'm also behind digitizing them.

Myke Hurley: That's why I don't do the crossover because my notebooks are so specific for their purpose that if I cross them over, I'm kind of screwed.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's get into what Dwayne has to say. This, this is kind of, uh, um, uh, along the same lines. Dwayne has five notebooks in use. The field notes red blooded. That is my catch all EDC notebook for shopping lists, article ideas, and random thoughts. That's my number one notebook at all times, whether doesn't matter what notebooks it is. I have a notebook. That's essentially my inbox. That's my notebook that I'll carry out of the house and carry around, carry to a coffee shop, just whatever junk I want to write in it. I definitely have that notebook. Cause number two is a Kukuyo idea notebook. I use to record a daily list of 10 or so ideas on random topics, including article ideas, business ideas, website ideas. That's a genius idea. I wish this is one of those things that if I did the chronodex where like I planned out my time every day, like I would have an hour or 30 minutes to say, let's brainstorm some ideas. Do you have just a total brainstorming focused notebook or any area in your life where you kind of dump that information? Like I'm going to sit down, I'm going to have this time, not for planning, not for scheduling meetings, not for writing articles, but for like creative stuff you want to do. Do you have a place to put that? Or do you take the time to do that? No, on both groups, I think. Yeah. That's such a great idea. I don't do that at all, but I read that and I was like, that's a really good use of your time, number one, and a good use of your notebook. So I'm really, really behind that, um, that idea. So, um, I'm going to have to think about incorporating that in stealing these ideas. And that's what I wanted to try to do here. You know, I'm just, I'm reading what everyone else does to maybe give the listeners an idea for how they use their notebooks and maybe something sticks with, you know, what we're talking about and something that would fit into your, to your daily writing or weekly writing or, or however you use your notebook. So that's what I wanted to kind of get out of this episode. So his number three notebook is a notebook he made from himself from scrap paper, staples, and gaffers tape that I use for, that he uses for article and blog planning. So I want to know, and I bet that the number would be pretty good. How many people make their own notebooks? You know, everyone that makes their own notebooks, I bet still, you know, buys the Moleskens or Field Notes or Roadies or whatever, but they're always monkeying around with some other format or paper or cover that would fit their, um, fit their needs too, and just kind of adds into the rotation. So he has a second notebook that he made himself that he uses for a writing schedule. So Dwayne's a planner. And then number five is another notebook that he made himself for making notes about classes he teaches. He says, luckily there's very little overlap and I've got each notebook performing a solitary task. This year I'm going to focus on recording things into Evernote daily. So I don't have to worry about digitizing it later. So he, uh, he says I used to carry a Moleskens pocket size, but I've retired it. All I'd use is use now for is pen testing. So, so from Kim and Dwayne, these first two multiple notebook users, I'm already getting like killer ideas from this. It's like, I need to, I don't need to rein in my quantity. I need to rein in the direction that I'm using these notebooks for. So I hope you're finding it useful and I hope others are finding it useful because it's really neat to, to see how other people's systems are set up. And it's so similar to us and to what a lot of people that are listening do. So, um, hopefully it's working out and we got a bunch more to get to. Um, but we have, we have some more friends to talk about

Myke Hurley: today. What do we got Myke? This episode is also brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code Inc at checkout Squarespace start here, go anywhere over the time that Squarespace have sponsored us. We've spoken about a few examples. Like we've spoken about like the relay FM blog. We've spoken about knock co and, uh, the pen addict, both being Squarespace sites, but we have a brand new example for you, uh, via, just by, by Jeff Bridges. So I saw that last night in case you haven't seen this Squarespace had a Superbowl ad and they've got like a whole ad campaign around it at the moment, which, uh, features a great site that they've created called dreaming with Jeff.com. Basically Jeff Bridges in collaboration with Squarespace have created like an audio album of sleeping tapes and Jeff, you know, in the videos, which are really funny and very entertaining, um, that they've created other than just the ad, uh, Jeff talks about how important sleep is and dreaming is, and he's created this album, uh, that is for that. So you can go to dreaming with Jeff.com and of course it's a Squarespace website and it shows you like the versatility and a lot of the features of Squarespace. So it looks great on all platforms. They have a beautiful template that they picked as one of the stock templates, which is some slight modifications, which anybody can do. All of the modifications they made are really easy for anyone on Squarespace with a Squarespace account to do. They haven't done anything special with it, but it has like an inbuilt audio player, which is part of Squarespace. They have the store so you can buy digital and even some physical versions of the albums. Uh, and, uh, the money that's raised there is going to go to charity. It's going to go to the no kid hungry charity in the States. So you can go to dreaming with Jeff.com and you can just see how fantastic this Squarespace website looks. And you're going to see, I can see something like that. You're going to check them out because they've got some other information about Squarespace there on that page. And I'm sure that you're going to want to get involved yourself. Of course, Squarespace, they have this great rock solid platform. They have great hosting. They have all this stuff like the commerce platform. Like I mentioned, they have a 24 seven support and so much more. I love them. Brad loves them. And we think you're going to love them too. Start a free trial right now with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com. And when you sign up, make sure that you use the offer code Inc at checkout. This will get you 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. Thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting relay FM Squarespace. Start here, go anywhere.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So their commercial play, the Jeff Bridges commercial played on the Superbowl last night. And it did, you don't know it's Squarespace till the end. And I'm just sitting there dying, laughing at, at Jeff. I, I, the chat room will have to tell me what instrument he was playing there to, um, to lull the people in the bedroom that he was sitting into sleep. And I'm just sitting there dying, laughing. My wife's like, who is that guy? It's like, that's Jeff Bridges. And she's like, okay, I thought he looked familiar and not just let it go at that. But it was really good. I, I, I liked that. Um, I liked that commercial a lot. So I will have, I haven't checked out the site yet, so I'll have to go do that. All right. This is a long one, but it carries so many things I want to talk about in it. So this is from Lisa and she titles this reactions on notebook use. She says, I try to have one notebook for real work. Currently a Marmon Memosign special memo notepad B6. That one lives in my backpack, often in a topo accessory bag with my iPad, but comes in and out for use. But then I have scattered notebooks for locations at my desk, on my dresser,

Brad Dowdy: beside bedside table. And she says like for each of those, she likes to have just something there to catch information when she needs it, where she needs it for later transfer. So number one, Myke,

Myke Hurley: do you keep a notebook on your nightstand or near your bed? Not near my bed. No, I can see why people do that. I mean, you've got your dreaming tapes, you know? Right. So many people do that. Oh, it's genius. Like, yeah, I am not one of those people though, that wakes up with great ideas.

Myke Hurley: Like I know that's why not everybody, but a lot of people do it. They're like, you know, they wake up from sleep and they have that great idea. I'm not sure you have, you know,

Brad Dowdy: I'm not sure you have great ideas while you're awake. Yeah. I just don't have any great ideas.

Myke Hurley: So I don't have an idea notebook because I have no ideas to write in the notebook.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I, I don't do that either. Um, I would wager again, a lot of our listeners do that and I totally see the validity in that, but I've just never gotten, that's never been a thing for me. Um, I've never woken up and gone, Oh, I wish I had a notebook here to write this down. It's, uh, like you, I don't have any good ideas. So, um, she continues, but since I don't actually carry a notebook in my pocket, it would have to transfer between my backpack and smaller bags. I'm thinking of trying a smaller Marmon notebook and sometimes use note cards for capture on systems for her to do's. She uses things on her computer and phone, but lately I found it helpful to write up a real to do plan for the day in the morning after consulting iCal and things. I put that on a three by five card, which I do put in my pocket. So this is something that I've mentioned several times that I want to do, but have not implemented yet that I have a list of things to do digitally. And every day I went to wake up, look at those digital items and transfer them to paper because that's where I seem to work out of more during the day, to be perfectly honest. I may have my phone with me all day long, but if I have a list of things to do, I'm going to be more likely to look at them on a piece of paper that I'm carrying around than on my phone. I can't explain that. It doesn't make any logical sense, but it's just the way I feel. I feel like I will do those things better. So do you do any of that, Myke? Do you, if you have, you have so much, you're a big OmniFocus guy. So do you have any kind of transference daily out of OmniFocus into a paper list that you then

Notebook Sets

Myke Hurley: work from? No, but this is something that I wish I did do because, uh, I have always enjoyed the set. I get more satisfaction crossing something off a list, um, than, than checking, checking it off digitally. But with the way that I work, the, the flexibility that a digital system gives, um, I actually find to be a lot better for me. It just works better for the way that I work. Um,

Brad Dowdy: right. So yeah. Right. So let me jump through a couple of these, cause we got a lot more, a lot more to get to. She, she posed a question. She was talking about using the last page of the notebook for trying out inks, um, which is something I mentioned I do. She said, here's a question, which is not necessarily paper related. And I'd be interested to hear what other people had to say, do you find that you waste a lot of time as it were exercising your pens? I think this is an artifact of having too many pens inked up. Um, I'm trying to keep them all active. Plus they're still relatively new and I keep testing ones that aren't perfect writers to check and see if they're good enough. I enjoy the pen exercising and it's sort of meditative, but it also seems a bit pointless. What are good ways to exercise pens if you don't feel like keeping a journal diary? So what she means, and I can totally relate to this. It's the, it's the curse of having too many pens inked up. And if you don't, you know, use a pen for a couple of weeks, couple of weeks, it's going to dry up. It might hard start. Um, so she's keeping that ink flow going by exercising the pens, just writing. And what I do is I do have a big scratch pad. I keep at my desk at home that when I find that I haven't been using a pen enough, but I don't want to clean it out because I need to review it or I just enjoy using it. But for some reason it hasn't, you know, been in the heavy rotation recently, I'll just get out and just start drawing, sketching, doing lettering, writing scribbles, just giving the pen a good workout. I mean, it's not rocket science. And if I find that I'm going through this routine and then I just don't enjoy the pen, I clean it out. So that's how I exercise my pens. I do just have one pad that's dedicated for basically just scribbling, garbage, doodles, junk, whatever you want to do to where you don't feel like you're messing anything up. So that's my thing. Do you, uh, do you ever have the need to exercise your pens, Myke? You don't have the, the, the quantity inked that I do, but, um, do you ever run into that?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I kind of just, when, when I ink something up new, I kind of like to scribble around in the notebook a little bit, you know, um, and just kind of, kind of shake off any cobwebs as it were. Uh, I like to do that, but I don't, I don't need to do it a lot because I kind of don't

Brad Dowdy: change it up a lot. Right. Right. So yeah, I, yeah, I can see that. And I wish I didn't have to do that. Honestly, I'm much happier with three pens inked up than seven to nine, which I have right now. But when I find myself in that large amount of inked up range, I do feel like I have to exercise them every few days just to, uh, just so they don't get clogged up. So let's see. So Greg says he's an, he's another addict that has come all in since listening to your show. I just thought I'd share quickly a photo of my stash, perhaps small by the standards of some addicts, but at least what I consider under control. So he's got some pictures of his stash. We can throw them in the show notes, but he's got a rodeo webbies, Apica premiums, moleskins, Lloyd's terms, field notes, and the Baron figure apprentice, um, all in the stash. And it's probably ballpark 20 notebooks, not counting three packs of the smaller notebooks. So that looks like a pretty normal stash for, for, um, the listeners of the show. I would say, uh, it's even a little bit light. So you need to step your game up, Greg. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Um, use your notebooks people. We'll, we'll talk about that on when we talk about field notes more, but, um, I did appreciate Jim's shout out to me in that episode, Myke. I definitely caught that. Um, so Greg says he also has a few smaller notebooks in play, such as field notes, moleskin pockets, Baron figure printings, one in my toolbox, one in the car, and a few around the house for quick notes. There's always one or two in use to record baby info. Um, that's a surprisingly big deal. And I did the same, um, you know, when they're eating, when they're going to the bathroom, we're going to have to get Casey lists on this show to get him out of the digital world and into the analog world for tracking baby poops. So, um, he'll, he'll get on that. And he'll also learn that I'm not British. Um, again, for real this time says their utility notebooks, all in use, always more than one. My one rule for larger notebooks, such as my current daily use Webby is one at a time cover to cover. I don't touch another new one until it's full and finished. I've started notebooks. I wasn't crazy about, but I stick to the rule, fill it and finish it before opening a new one. I feel like I'm getting my money's worth. And this also somehow keeps the nicer ones from being too precious to beat up and use says I'm a web designer developer. So I fill them up pretty quickly with notes to do list, wireframe sketches, et cetera. This allows me to feed my addiction for variety. While I burn through them. This is a huge problem for me, the larger size notebook. I can't tell you the last time I finished one. Do you use like say an a five or greater size notebook, Myke? Um, instead of like the memo book size. Well, yeah, I use the arts and sciences, right? Okay. So yeah, but it's, it doesn't have that many pages. That's totally reasonable. But do you have, you have used like the a hundred plus pagers recently? No. Yeah. It's like the rodeo webby or something like that. Oh man. That that's like a fantasy of mine. This is how ridiculous I am. It's like, I would love one day to be able to get a rodeo webby and fill it from front page to back and have every page used and have something on every page, even if it's nothing important. I never finished those books. I finished memo books all the time, but the larger notebooks, I've kind of stopped using for that fact. I'll get 10 pages into it. And I think I've gotten maybe 30 or 40 pages into a webby. And then I end up just putting on my notes and, you know, I'm in my book. And, um, I, I think that's a very, um, very good goal to have for the larger notebooks one at a time, cover to cover, don't touch another new one until it's full and finished. Ooh, that's a, that's a serious challenge there. That's a Seinfeld level challenge. Um, if you ask me and I'd like, I'd be curious to see how many people really, really do that because that's, I find that extremely hard as much as I want to use those types of notebooks. Um, that is a monstrous challenge for me. I don't, I don't know if I can commit to that. So I can commit to buying some more pens, Myke though. Yeah. Do you have anything? Yeah. Yeah. What do you get? What do you get? Do you have anything I need to check out?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I see what you, I see where you're going with this. This week's episode of the pen addicts brought to you by our friends over at pen chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more with loads of your favorite brands like Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, and so many more. They have great, reliable, fast customer service. They're always adding new pens every single month and they have loads of other stuff like carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. They have free shipping on orders of over $50 in the continental United States, but they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates too. Pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com and use the code pen addict to save 10% on your order. But what you should be doing is clicking that podcast link at the top of the website page and enter the password pen addict for even more savings as well as your 10% off. Today, we have a few different offers for you that the guys over at that Ron and the guys over at pen chalet have put together for you. So we have the Platinum Izumo, which is at 40% off. And then once you put the pen addict code at checkout, you'll be make it 50% off for you. And Ron has also wanted me to let the listeners know that they still have some of the Kaweco art on sale and they're getting more back into stock this week as we kind of sold them out. So they're going to be, they're taking delivery of some more this week. So there'll be some back in stock. So you should check out those. And they also have some great prices on the Platinum 3776, including the nice Per, Sai and Shoji models. So you should go and check all of those out. Some great deals this week, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So definitely check out these Platinum deals. The Izumo is not a pen I was familiar with before I saw it at pen chalet. And what it is, it's an Arushi lacquer pen. If you've heard me talk about Nakaya before, and Nakaya is actually an offshoot of Platinum. So Platinum has the artisans to apply these Arushi lacquer techniques to these pens. And this one's, you know, different, much different looking than, than a traditional Nakaya. And it looks really beautiful. It's a very expensive pen. And I don't know, you know, if everyone's in the market for something like this, but it's certainly something to check out and see how beautiful it is. I've never seen that barrel shape or design before. So I'm going to keep my eye on that one. And then he also has really good deals on the, the 3776, which is meters, Myke, of Mount Fuji in Japan. And the, the price on these is really, really good for 14 carry gold nib. We're talking like around a hundred for the rhodium, the plated nibs. And there's actually one that I bet he only has a few of, and by the end of the show, he's not going to have any of, he has one of the 3776 is just the standard model for $59. And after the coupon, $53. And that's a gold nib pen and just in, oh no, it's a stainless steel nib. So that's why the price is that way. So it comes in broad stainless steel nib. I've never seen that. I've never seen the 3776 with a stainless steel nib. So that's interesting if you like that barrel. And then the pure and the shoji in the shoe. I own one of those. I love them and they're great. So definitely check out these great deals from Pen Chalet. And thanks to Ron for sponsoring us this week on the pen addict. As always. Thanks guys. Yeah. And thanks. Thanks for buying all those art sports last time. Yes. Ron got, Ron got a good laugh out of that, that we, we knocked him out of stock, but he was able to find some more. So I talked to him about that. So he's pretty excited about that. All right. So this is a, this is an email I liked here. And this is a, something you're going to have, people are gonna have to check out in the show notes after the fact. And this is from Brian. He says, I never listened to podcasts. I randomly listened to episode 137 because the title fascinated me. So props to the chat room that pick out titles.relay.fm. See, your work is important. You're doing important work here by picking out titles that people will just listen to our podcast randomly. So props to y'all. It says the idea of multiple active note, notebooks. He, he fascinated him and he wanted to hear what you guys had to say. As it turns out, you guys mentioned a few topics of interest to me. I knew I wanted to write you and I started to. My reply was getting quite long and I felt it needed a better place than being trapped in an email. So I turned it into a blog post, but stated it as a direct reply to you guys. So he has a whole organization, um, blog post that we will link to. It's very, very long. And I read through it a couple of times and the tidbit I got out of it is one we just mentioned. And I wanted to reiterate it because I think it's such a good idea and it's for calendaring. And he says, yes, I would rewrite my calendar events for the day. It seems tedious and redundant, but it really only takes a couple of seconds. I would look at my outlook calendar for work and put those things down. I'd then look at my personal calendar and put those things down as well. Even though I have both readily available and could easily look at both from any phone, tablet, or computer I'm currently using, I find the act of listening, listing them for the day to be extremely helpful. It sets the idea of the flow of the day in my head better than just looking at a calendar and not having it soak in. I thought that's a really important point. And that's kind of what you were alluding to, Myke. Sometimes it just works better. You can put that puzzle of your day together better laying it out on paper than looking at it digitally on your phone or your computer. For some reason, it grabs a hold of you better and you can manage it better. At least I find, I totally find that to be the case. So related to that, he says, as an aside, I find that a paper calendar for my personal stuff is not an option. Most of my personal events are not my own activities. These are family activities. When my wife works, kids, events, etc. The digital calendar allows easily sharing between multiple family members and we invite each other to stuff to keep everyone up to date. So this is 100% what I do and what I want to do. This is why you and I have talked about that I can't use a Hobonichi, like a day planner, right? I can't have that day tied to a date because I feel like that's a calendar and that needs to be digital because I have family things and outside things that I need to handle. But for tasks related to a calendar, I want to have that digitally and then pull out those tasks and put them into paper. I don't know. It makes me sound weird saying these things out loud, but it's like, I agree with that 110%. It's like exactly what gets me. I think it's all weird though, right? What we're

Myke Hurley: doing. Like, I don't think any of this, I mean, I don't mean that in the nicest possible way. Like, none of it's any less weird than anything else that we do, right? So the fact that having multiple

Brad Dowdy: notebooks on the go is, is kind of crazy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I, I'm definitely not, uh, I don't really care about the weird factor at all, but sometimes when you're like rattling these things off, like how I handle this stuff, it, that's why, you know, putting all this down, getting all this response from all these different people, um, it's not, it doesn't make you feel more normal, but it makes you feel like, okay, you know, I think we have something here and I think I can work with this system and I think I can improve on this system. So I love getting this, this kind of feedback, the amount of words of feedback we got for this episode is just mind boggling. So, all right. So that was Brian. Um, let's talk about Jack. So Jack says my five active notebooks and their typical pen companion. So I thought this was good because he, he ties them not just to the notebook for the task, but the pen for the notebook for the task. You are Jack. You are a hero. He's a hero of ours. You know, Jack is our hero. You are a prince among men, sir. So he has his number, number one is a Moleskine pocket size branded for Dropbox. Always in my pocket. I usually use one of high tech C retro 51 and Lamy Safari. Number two, field notes, ambition edition used for meal planning. I love the look of the Sino DX 038 brown black in the ambition series. See, this is like perfect. I was like, that's the perfect choice. It's like the pen sommelier that we've talked about, you know, having the right ink and the right pen. So the right color matches the feel of the notebook. And I love you, Jack.

Moleskine Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: Number three is the Moleskine hobbit edition found in his Christmas stocking for recording hikes, epic bite rides, and other travel. The first entry was with a high tech C, but next I'm planning to use my waterman expert with an F nib. See, he went for a pen. It did not fit the notebook properly. And he has found a better pen to use that matches the Moleskine hobbit notebook. It's great. So number four is another field notes, ambition. He does have a little problem with the ambitions. This with the ledger lines for recording aquarium changes have to stick with the brown black Sino DX 038 for that one. So he's, he's locked into the brown black Sino with his ambition additions. And I can get behind that. Number five is a four size line Japanese notebook, but he can't remember the brand name. It's uses his bullet journal with a modified dash plus journal. And he's working out incorporating this journal into his GTD system, which is mostly based on OmniFocus. So he sounds like another one that uses OmniFocus and then pulls things out into like a daily task list.

Brad Dowdy: And he left out the pen on that. So one demerit for you, Jack, you didn't give me the pen for the unknown Japanese notebook. So he says he has some other notebooks coming in and he'll have to see what replaces the current ones. He's at the near end of a, near the end of a pocket Moleskine and has the Kurnow book binding and leather pocket notebooks with the Tamale River paper coming in any day. And he's also planning on trying some NotCo stuff. So I appreciate that. And I will have to try out those Tamale River papers. Everyone has been asking me to try those out and I will certainly do that. All right. Dennis is another one that went full blog post as a response to this episode. And that just boggles my mind. So we'll have this one in the show notes as well. Dennis's entire response as a blog post. And I read through it and I pulled out one of my, um, the most important point I found in that post. And he did this for letters. He says, I write in mail a couple letters a week to friends and family members. I picked up the letter writing habit when my daughter was in the Peace Corps and didn't have regular access to phone or email service. I've kept it up and I find I enjoy letter writing as an opportunity to communicate and to document what is going on with me and the family. After I write the letter, but before I mail it, I scan it and save it in a folder on my computer's external hard drive. That way I have a record of what I've written. That boggled my mind. I'm not a letter writer, so I don't know if this is a normal thing, but I was like, that is a genius move. I mean, you write these letters to people and, you know, most of it's just, maybe it's just chit chat or maybe there's actually something, you know, that you refer to and you may want to refer to later and it goes in with the, we can tie it all back into IncoWriteMo this month. People are writing these letters. I'm wondering, have you ever heard of such a thing, Myke, that you're going to write these letters, you're an avid letter writer, and then you scan them in digitally before you mail it out so you have a copy of the letter that you just mailed out to somebody? I'd be interested to know if anyone does that. That sounds like such a foreign thing to me, but I thought it was genius.

Myke Hurley: Maybe it makes sense if you're a letter writer. I mean, and neither of us are really letter writers.

Brad Dowdy: Right. But I mean, that didn't even cross my mind even remotely.

Brad Dowdy: So I would be...

Myke Hurley: I did for a minute think that you were going to say that he scanned them in and emailed them. Like that would be a whole new thing.

Brad Dowdy: Now, I get those emails, right? Because I have people that correspond with me and if they have never corresponded with me before and they go to the pen addict page and they see the contact form, there's no place for an attachment. So they'll email me, ask me to please reply so they can have my email address so they can email me a scanned copy of their question that they want to ask me that they hand wrote on paper.

Myke Hurley: Maybe you should put your email address on there, buddy. To save yourself getting those emails.

Brad Dowdy: No, it's fun.

Myke Hurley: No, no, no. So people will just send you it directly rather than say, can you send me your email address?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'll put that on there too. You should do that. I should have a line say, if you have an attachment here, send it to this email address. That's what I should do. So that's what it is. People that want to send attachments, they want to write their questions to me on paper and email them to me. And that's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you can't not accept that, you know, because... No, no, no. I always reply. I'm not saying that you wouldn't, but like, you know, somebody in your situation, you know, you write your reviews on paper as well. So it's kind of like, you know, it's perpetuating itself, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah. I always, I always totally accept them. I'm like, absolutely. Here's my email. Send it on. So we got one more that's not in the show notes because it just came in right before we recorded this episode. So people are still listening to the episode 137 Notebook Emergency. So you should go back and listen to it if you have not. And it's from our good friend, Father Kyle Sanders. And I will put this link in the show notes. And I have not read the post yet, but I'm looking at it right now. And his new blog called Reverence Writing, he does a really, really good job, has some beautiful photography. And so I will read that after this post. But it's again, people have taken this episode 137 and have written complete blog posts to follow up with on that. And for that, I am thankful and impressed and so appreciative that you guys and gals are taking the time to do this for me and Myke for our little outlet every week. And I can't tell you how much we really appreciate the support you guys give us. So thank you so much. And I will leave it at that, Myke. It was a fun-filled episode. I'm parched. I've been talking too much.

Myke Hurley: You have done a lot of talking today. I'm proud of you.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going over to Anna's house for gin and tonics after this. So we didn't mention the part where we're going to fly me to Anna's house tonight after the episode for drinks so we can start planning for the pen show.

Myke Hurley: That's how these things work. Yep. That's how these things work. If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode, you need to, of course, be in the app that you use, I hope. Or otherwise, you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash one four zero. That means we're 10 weeks away.

Brad Dowdy: 10 weeks, buddy.

Myke Hurley: From the Atlanta Pen Show, which we're so excited about. If you want to find our Kickstarter project so you can back for the video or if you want to help us out, you can find that in the show notes too or just search for the pen addict on Kickstarter and you will find us. If you want to find Mr. Brad Dowdy online, he's at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter. He is penaddict on Instagram and he writes over at penaddict.com. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on both Twitter and Instagram as well. If you'd like to follow me there and follow Brad there too, you can. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, our friends over at Linda, Squarespace and The Pen Chalet. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.