The Pen Addict 596/transcript
| The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript | |
|---|---|
| Episode: | 596 |
| Title: | Frixion Dots |
| Release Date: | January 3rd, 2024 |
| Hosts: | Brad Dowdy |
| Guests: | No guests this episode |
| Additional Information | |
| Official page: | Episode 596 |
| Audio File: | Audio Episode 596 |
| Podcast page: | The Pen Addict 596 |
| Length: | 5959 min <br />0.983 h <br /> minutes |
| Previous Transcript | Next Transcript |
From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 596. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Squarespace. Happy New Year. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad Dowdy. Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year, Myke Hurley. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm very good. I'm happy to be back recording the show. Hope everybody had a good holidays.
Hope everybody had a good New Year's. Yeah, same. I'm definitely glad to be back. I was kind of anxious for yesterday being Tuesday the 2nd. That's when the normal schedule kicked back in.
Even though I worked all of last week, it's still a little bit weird not working on a bunch of Mondays in a row and then having a bunch of three-day weekends in a row, which is all great. But my head, the way my brain works around work, it's like, I'm kind of ready to get back into the schedule again.
So, got a lot done yesterday, my first work day of the year, and now we're right back into the podcasting flow, which always feels great. I love talking about this stuff, obviously. So, this is a really fun time of year to talk about stationery, I think. Always is.
Yeah, so I want to start this off with the big picture. So, you know, we'll have some news and links later. I want to talk about some product stuff. But I want to jump right into themes for 2024, Myke.
And this is kind of follow-up to your episode with CGP Grey on Cortex about your yearly themes. So, why don't you give us the pitch, even though we've talked about it before. We might have some new listeners picking us up today. Give us the quick pitch on the themes, and then we'll definitely have a link in the show notes to where you can catch the most recent yearly themes episode over at Cortex.
Alright, hello. I'm Myke Hurley, and I'm here to tell you resolutions suck, and no one should do them. Instead of setting a resolution at the start of the year, where you set yourself up to fail by setting a goal that you're inevitably not going to meet and then be disappointed about, instead of that, you set a theme, which is an overall idea of how you would like to approach your year, then becoming a guide for your personal or professional, and both, maybe, life throughout the period.
So you would like, for example, let me give you an example. So you may say to yourself, hey, I want to read a bunch of books this year, and I'm going to read 20 books. And then you read 19 books, and you failed. But you read loads of books.
So if instead you said, I'm going to have a year of reading, you can just read more. Maybe you read books, but maybe you change, and you start reading magazines. Maybe you start reading papers because you're a scientist or something like that. And then you've achieved your year of reading.
So a yearly theme is more like a guide. It's a word or a phrase that you give for yourself for you to follow throughout the year. As you're approaching different decisions or questions, as the year progresses, you can use your theme as a guide to help you make the right decisions.
So you set something much more broad, much more kind to yourself, and it will allow you to have a framework to have some change. If you're interested in this after today, and you want some suggestions for themes, the Cortex brand Instagram account is currently going through the 12 days of themes, where for the first 12 days of the year, we are posting a theme suggestion.
And they're pretty in-depth with lots of journaling prompts that you can use and ideas for how you could maybe make one of these themes your theme, or just give you kind of like an overall idea of how you could make a theme of your own. And that's kind of the crossover between Cortex and the Pen Addict, because a lot of us are looking at these themes and have belief in the system, but a lot of us, and a lot of us use these analog tools to help track or manage, or maybe your theme is, you know, the year of stationery that you're actually going to use your stuff more, you know, whatever that entails.
So there is a lot of crossover, which is why I like to talk about it, at least on this first episode of the year, then maybe check in later at the end of the year, but y'all really, really cover it well over at Cortex. So I'm going to talk about my theme, but why don't you give everyone a little preview of what your theme is for 2024?
Yeah, 2024 for me is the year of people. So I feel like over the last few years, especially, I've gotten myself into a situation where for me to be able to achieve the things that I want to achieve, whilst also maintaining a high quality of work across everything I'm already doing, I need to have more people around me to help me realize this stuff.
This is me letting go of the reins a little bit more, letting people with different skills take over different areas of work that I'm doing. It's also about me seeking help from people that I may not have otherwise before, and bringing people in to help me get where I want to be.
This is building out teams and practices and strategies, having people work together without me needing to be involved. And also I have a new assistant who helps me manage my projects now and is becoming like the bottleneck to the work that I want to do. Everything has to kind of pass through her and she'll help me understand if and how I'm able to do a certain thing.
And then also in that, understanding the ways that she can then take things off my plate for me and go and do them. Another part of this, which sits in quite nicely, is this is the 10th year of RelayFM this year. So I'm going to be spending a lot of time thinking about people, the people that have helped make this happen.
And then, of course, in the summer, in July, we have our live show where there'll be a lot of people coming to watch us. So that's my year theme for this year, people. Yeah, I really enjoyed listening to that episode, both you and Grace. Themes for this year, a lot of it kind of resonates with me.
Like one of the things I'm bad at is asking for help with things. Yeah. And that goes into the overall people context is like, you know, I could do better work if I was a little bit more open to asking for help and not just being frustrated and doing certain things.
So, yeah, that's a really, really good theme. So I had been percolating on my theme most of the fall and winter thinking about. I wasn't really thinking of it as a theme yet, but you've probably heard me talk about it here on the show, how I'm sometimes frustrated.
With my tracking of things or just wanting to do a better job at being thorough when I'm talking about things and, you know, wrapping better context around conversations. And so this theme idea came about from the desire to kind of track more information, to have more data, to think about, you know, things in a different way, in a more just kind of accurate, thorough manner.
So I came up with a term that I like where it could have been like the year of data or the year of tracking. And those sound, I didn't like how those sounded to me. So what I came up with for my theme of 2024 is the year of recording.
Okay. And that encompasses a lot of things, right? It's a much better term than the very strict term like the year of data, which I would, that just even kind of makes me cringe. It's like I would totally fail. Like even though you can't really fail a theme, you can just really not do as well as you hope to.
But the year of recording made more sense to me because like one simple example is I always get to the end of the year and I really don't have a grasp on what my favorite products of the year were other than what's currently in my head at the time, right?
I want a way to kind of track these things throughout the year, have different prompts to remind me to do these things and different prompts that allow me to remember things as we go. So when it comes to the end of the year, like I talked about last year, it's like, hey, why can't I have certain products of the year?
It's like, well, I couldn't do it last year because I felt like I wouldn't be thorough enough. So that's like one little bit of it, right? So I am thinking about how I'm going to track my pens and inks that I use, you know, and any writing instruments, right?
And paper and things like that. How am I going to track my stationery usage? I'm literally just tracking it on a pen and paper right now, but that's not a tenable, you know, 365 day a year option. So I'm starting on paper for this month, and as I go through the month, I'm going to start dabbling and seeing how I want to digitally capture this because I do want to be able to sort, you know, and tag and search this recording that I'm doing, this data that I'm collecting.
So I might have to use some type of spreadsheet, some type of database, some type of app, you know, whether it's as simple as Google Sheets or something more complex. We'll see. So that's one part of the recording. I also want to dabble a little bit in video content, not necessarily doing like YouTube reviews or anything like that, or not even, maybe not even YouTube at all, but just pushing out a little bit more fun, short form content, you know, not in the YouTube shorts kind of way or the like the Instagram reels kind of way, but more in just like fun little storytelling type of content, you know, one to three minute little storytelling, additional content that I can create.
I don't even know where I would post them. Maybe still maybe on Instagram or YouTube, but more like a vlog style format. That's something I've never really done before, but I've always enjoyed that type of content that I see. You know, it's in this gap.
I feel like there's this range between like a YouTube short and a 10 minute video review. I think there's a little bit of storytelling that can happen in that space, in that like one to three minute space to where we can have some interesting conversations, some ideas. So I'm trying to, you know, flex that creative muscle a little bit, right?
Like I'm always thinking about creating new things and making new things and not executing on them, right? Just because like you, like I'm busy enough as it is, but I always want to do different things, right? I'm always trying to create things too. So that's one part of the year of recording is to do a few things like that.
And it wouldn't be like a frequent, too overwhelming to my schedule type of thing. But if I could do one of those a month, that would be a lot. Like if I could make like a fun little three minute video once a month, that would be really cool.
Like I think I would be down for something like that. So I'm going to play around with that. And then I'm just going to have some general life recording type of stuff, you know, maybe just for my personal use or maybe just for random for like on my micro.blog.
Like I listen to a ton of music and I just kind of want to put down some notes on the things I listen to music. So maybe like a little media log on my micro.blog. So I've already set up, I've started writing some things just in Ulysses.
I created a new folder called music. So I'm just writing some notes on the things that I listen to and I'm probably going to publish that. So recording things, thinking about things a little bit different. You know, I've started, you know, I really want to like discuss like music a little bit more, right?
So like micro.blog is a good place for that. And it just lives on kind of its own little home there. And anyone can go see it over at brad.micro.blog. There's not much on there now, just like my general post, but I'm going to make some more specific posts.
So like I'm reading a lot of music content, you know, like I signed up for, I've had a last FM account for, I don't know, a couple of years. And like I signed up for that. I like seeing all the tracking that's going in that. So I'm recording things there.
Like I just followed a new website that's just come out called crucialtracks.org. Everyone should go check that out. They have some really good music content on there. So I am just scratching these different itches that I have that kind of let my brain go into a different space, right?
Like you can't do the thing that you do all the time, right? I can't do stationery 100% of my waking hours, right? And I never have. Like I've been actually pretty good about segmenting that.
But I have these different creative itches I want to expand on a little bit more. And I think the year of recording kind of summarizes a lot of the little things that I want to do that if I'm successful doing them will make my year better. Just like, you know, better content for the pen addict, better headspace for thinking about things differently, better knowledge for learning things differently, you know, things like that.
So that's kind of what I'm looking at for the year of recording just in general. So this is top tier theming from my perspective because you have a couple of things that are different from each other that both fit into the theme name. Yes. Right. So you have like recording things that you love, but then also recording video, right?
Like I really like that. I really like when you can find, like what I did, right? Like I have people is about like working with people, but it's also spending time with people. Like this is like, I think that's really fun.
And it's one of my favorite things about themes is when you can, because you have it as a guide, not as like a strict rule of any specific, any like specificity. You can fit multiple things that you want to achieve in your life in there. And that also helps you in feeling like you've been successful when you come to review it later on in the year, because you give yourself multiple chances to be effective.
Yeah. So I think you've done, I think this is really cool. I love it. Good. Yeah. It's funny how sometimes with the theme, and I've done this for many, many years, not as many years as you have, but sometimes when you land on the correct naming, like if I named this the year of data or the year of tracking, like I wouldn't be able to say a bunch of the things that I wanted to say.
But when I landed on the year of recordings, like all the things I want to do fit in that. It starts to slot together. It becomes like an inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. So it was almost like I backed into the name.
I basically thought about and wrote down the things I wanted to do and then thought about like what's kind of all the common theme here. And it's like, well, I'm recording all of this stuff. And some of it's like literally recording. Hey, record more videos.
Some of it's, you know, tracking what pen I use. So it kind of fit. I was kind of came up with that only like a few weeks ago, literally after months of thinking about it. Right. Like it's just I think about this stuff a lot.
So, yeah, it was good. I feel I feel good about it. I've already started some things like literally my only hang up, like the one thing I'm kind of anxious about. And I will solve this problem like, you know, here in the next month or maybe two is the digital part of the data collection.
Like I have to have something like I'm not going to be able to I'm not going to get to the end of the year and look at pages of handwritten. What pen did I use today list and have that be valuable. So I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do with that, whether it's sheets.
You know, maybe I'll you talk about notion a lot. Maybe there's something in notion that I know she'll be good set up for this. So I'm looking at those different database and spreadsheet type of things. So, you know, Airtable and, you know, just a table.
Airtable is a good thing. I think you do a lot of it in notion, though, what you can do in Airtable. And then you also open yourself up to being able to do more with that content. You know, you can write about stuff and things like that, which would be interesting.
Right. And I've also looked at shortcuts, which I don't use. Like I don't have any shortcuts. And it's like, you know, I could track this with a shortcut. Just hit the shortcut prompt for when I use a new item and then fill out the little things.
And then append that to whatever, you know, database or sheet that I'm using, even if it's just a text file for now. You know, so those are the type of things I'm looking at in the next, you know, few weeks. I need to collect this data first and then I'm going to kind of figure out how I want to sort it.
And then hopefully by like next month, I'll be able to have like a better answer for the digital side of this. My only challenge to you will be to find a way to incorporate thinking about the theme or reflecting about the theme in your journal practice. Okay. So obviously I'm not tending to use a theme system journal.
Sure. I don't think you need to because you are already a journaler. But I genuinely believe that a theme becomes most effective if it's integrated into some kind of frequent reflection. Okay. Because it makes... I just wrote a note called Reflecting Check-In. Yeah. I really feel like it's important.
Just figure out what that timing is. Because if your theme is a guide, you need to keep it front of mind. And one of the best ways to do that for me and for others we've found over time is to have some kind of daily thought about it.
Like something that I've seen a lot of people do that aren't journalists, they like make a phone background with the word, stuff like that. Sure. Like you've got to keep it front of mind. And I think it works for journaling because you are, we're going to talk about it later, a prolific journaler.
I would really recommend having it. Well, if you do any habit tracking, stuff like that, you could put it in there. All that kind of stuff I think is genuinely like a really important part of it to make sure that you're keeping it in your mind every day.
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Hey, Brad, what have you found? I'm going to say a sentence that I don't know that I've ever said before in my life, but this cross fountain pen stopped me in my tracks. -oh. I was going down the list here. I was like, is this a sailor?
And then it's like, no, it's a cross Bailey light fountain pen. Then I looked over. I was like, what is this pen? I've never seen it before.
What is it? Then I look over and it's at a price that's obnoxiously cheap. So this must be kind of an entry level cross fountain pen, but it looks really, really nice. This would be great for people to test out or to give to people to try fountain pens.
I mean, it's $10.99. I'm just going to say what it is. It doesn't look like that. Like I said, when I pulled up this image, I was like, oh, what is this sailor doing in here?
That's what this pen looks like. And it's super, super cheap. And it looks really nice. I also saw further down one of my favorite pens, the Montegrappa Elmo.
That is an incredible price. I was going to bring that up if you didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that one always catches my eye because it's just one of my favorite pens. I have a couple of different models of these.
So this is the Elmo 02. They have these really, Montegrappa does this kind of like a striated material, I guess is the best way to call it. It's something that they do in-house. And yeah, like I said, I've got two different models with that type of pattern.
I have another Montegrappa Elmo. I have a couple. Gosh, I have, wow. I'm thinking about this.
Yeah, I think I have about four pens that fit into this category. So this is one of my favorite pens just to use. It's a wonderful writer. The nibs are great.
And it's just cool looking. So, and like you said, they're at a really, really good price. And I'll always mention now when they sneak in the Pelican replacement nibs because I got such a nice thank you note for someone saying, oh my gosh, I'm glad you said that.
So they had an 800 nib in there before, which is what I got the email on. They have a 600 nibs available now. Loose Pelican replacement nibs in there. So I will always mention those because that's not something you see very often.
So there you go. A bunch of good stuff out there. Penshalet.com. P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website.
Use the password of Pen Addict. You'll be able to see these offers. And also get a code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Penshalet. Our thanks to Penshalet for their continued support into 2024 and their support of RelayFM as well.
Thank you. All right, Myke, we got our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. I don't think I've ever done a big company shout out, but I cannot help but want to share the Instagram feed of Pilot Korea. Okay. I put in a statement, basically what the heck is going on over there.
So if you go over to their feed, I had been following them already, and I'd start to see these in my Instagram feed. Pilot Cinema. Get tickets now. All this stuff popping up in here. You okay over there? This is odd. So basically, I said, what the heck is going on here?
So the more I read, the more I dug into this, Pilot Korea ran a pop-up shop at this location during the holiday season. So I'm guessing it's over now. I think the last post is like, see you next year. But it's like, I don't know, I don't know, like a small trailer or like an RV sized building, you know, just a little rectangle.
But it's Pilot Cinema now showing and you go in and you get tickets and they have all the new pins you can try. Why is it a cinema though? I yet to figure this out. There is an ET.
There's an ET call out in one of these posts, you know, with the bike ride through the moon type of thing. Let me see if we can translate that. Yeah, I've also seen like lots of La La Land things. Yeah. It's like you could pick up.
Yeah, I don't understand. Oh, there's a lot of things going on here. But yeah, it's wild. So if you haven't seen this, I wanted to give them a shout out because I'm impressed.
Like this is like a lot of work to come up with this whole idea. And they have, you know, probably 20 images, 20 images on here to kind of sort through what they're doing. But they just, I thought it was like a one-off thing. And then they just kept coming through the feed.
So I was like, I got to share this. I got to share this, even though it looks like it's over now. So they now say the Pilot Cinema to be continued. So maybe we'll see them next year.
So one of the things I noticed they did have in the Pilot Korea feed, in which I'd start to see elsewhere, the new Friction Y, I guess, is what we're going to call it. W-A-A-Y. You know what, Brad? I'm going to say Y, just in general to the Pilot Friction.
I had to buy some Pilot Frictions today, Brad Doughty, which made me very bad. Let me just tell you the day that I've had today, right? Yeah, let's go. I woke up this morning to an email from a very friendly person who said, I bought the Sidekick notepad and I love it.
I'm a Pilot Friction user. And when I erase, it erases the dots from the paper. Really? And so I replied and said, this is very strange. I've not, you're the first person that I've seen, but I don't really know what to do about this.
Like I have no solution for you. That's where that is so far. Because I don't. I have no idea what to say about that. Now I'm really thinking about this.
Okay. So I have now bought some Pilot Frictions. Did you get the Y? I just bought the ones that have the tribal tattoos on them because I figured I might as well just go all in. Okay. That's the original. That's the OG. You should have entered the ball knock zone, Myke.
That's what you should have done. I just wanted to get as cheaply as possible on Amazon. And while I was walking down the street today to the studio, I saw a billboard for the Pilot Friction. Yeah, baby. I'm being haunted, Brad, by the Pilot Friction.
They're taking over the world. They're taking over the world. Next thing you know, you're going to have a rocket book. To me, this feels like one of those things where like maybe it's just pulling up the ink.
I don't know. I don't even know how it would do that. Like a regular eraser does not do this to the paper. So I don't know what's going on. That is odd. That is super odd.
They may be like what I think could potentially be happening. And I just saw this mentioned by Jen in the chat. They may just be erasing so hard they're pulling off the top layer of the paper or something. Right. It's like what they're doing.
Like they're just erasing too hard. Yeah, but you would think a traditional eraser would do an even worse job at that. Like it would be more aggressive. Yeah. I guess it just depends how much you erase.
Like I said, I'm really thinking about this too much already. Like I really want to test this out. Like they sent me an image. Sure. Right. And I can see that it's happening.
So now I've just bought some friction. But it's just like I hate this pen. I hate everything it stands for. And now it's causing problems.
You bought the tribal one. You bought the tribal one. It doesn't get worse than that. I love the friction, but I'm not that one.
I hate the friction. I hate all of them. And so I just figured if I don't like it, I might as well get the worst one. Okay. And I also just went to Amazon.
What is cheapest is what I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't want these things, but now they're on the way to me. So I got that to look forward to. I almost didn't put this in the show notes, and I'm glad I did.
Why? Because there's really not much to say. These whys. I mean, other than the name. Why? Other than the name. This one is actually what the friction should be because it's a lot of lighter pastel-y colors.
I mean, there's black and red, but a lot of them, it's sand beige, dry peach. Maybe I should just tell this person they should just put the sidekick in the microwave. Ah, true. Freezer. Freezer brings them back. Freezer will bring back the dots.
Yeah, so the heat will make it disappear, then the freezer will bring them back. That's what it is. Perfect. The dots will come back with the freezer. You have friction dots on the sidekick, Myke.
I mean, if that is the case, then I might just use it as a selling point. Because people seem to want to erase everything. So... Rocket book to the moon, baby. There you go. Now you can erase the dots and get a plain pad if you want.
So this is just, you know, this is just a thing. Sometimes weird stuff happens. Absolutely. You have to try and work out what the deal is. And then maybe this is now just a thing.
Honestly, I'm pretty pleased that this is the first time I've heard this because I know how popular this dumb pen is. It's an amazing pen. No, they're terrible. Bad. I will not stand for your friction slander. Bad pens. Bad idea. Bad idea. Own your mistakes. Love it. Or use a pencil.
Yeah. Yeah. So this is like when... I know... Gosh, was it Rhodia? I forget which one. So a lot of inks that get printed on paper will reject fountain pen inks, right?
Just the way the inks are. And it's like... That's just kind of like a feature. It's like that's just the way that ink was printed on there. And it just kind of doesn't play well with the water-based fountain pen ink.
And you might just have to find something else in that case. But yeah, they're fine. Very strange. They're fine. All right. Let's continue on this paper journey. Myke, I've set up my journals and planners for 2024.
I have a blog post about what I'm using, which I forgot to link in the show notes. But we will have that for the show notes in your podcast player of choice. And it's pretty straightforward that I'm continuing what I used previously, with one exception. So continuing on from last year.
And I don't need to spend a lot of time on these because we've talked about them a lot. I have been successful with my Hobonichi five-year journal year one. So 2023 was my Hobonichi first year of the five-year journal. And I completed the whole thing, Myke.
I'm very proud of myself. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to shout out me on that one. And I've started into the second year, which is where the beauty of the five-year journals begin.
Because I am now writing on January 1st or January 2nd of the following year. So I get to look back at what I wrote last year on there. So you have to make it through an entire year of the Hobonichi five-year to really get to the beauty.
So it is a commitment notebook. I think I've told you one day I want to try and make a one-year version of this idea where you can come back to it every three months. Because I think you can maybe get a bit more benefit out of that.
Yeah. I can see that. For some time in the future. Because I love this idea. But as you said, it's a one-year commitment before it starts to pay off.
Right. Yeah. The payoff is late in this one. So it's a commitment buying something that's called five-year journal to begin with. But you really don't even get those benefits for a full year. So it's a big ask.
So I get it. I get it. But yes, that's good. I started my new year in there. I think I've just put in the first.
I usually run like a day or two behind. So, you know, that's been good for me so far. So that stays. The plotter narrow also stays. I have kind of locked into the planner ability of the plotter to where I can see my week on a single two-page layout that I like.
There's a lot of other systems that do that as well. So that's the kind of layout that works for me. Do you have the Tetcho five-year? What's it called? I think it's just, I don't know what the Tetcho five-year is called.
I mean, they have a product called the Hobonichi five-year Tetcho. Yeah, that's what, okay. So that's the real name. So it's not the five-year journal.
It's the five-year Tetcho. So my apologies. Yes. No apology necessary. The real name of it is. Yeah. So there's an A, and I have the A6 version. I think there is an A5 version as well.
So yeah, the plotter narrow is my calendars, planners, tasks, to-dos. Very short form type of stuff goes there. Like ideas. I have a lot of lists in there that, you know, I need to, products I need to review. That's a list. Products I need to buy for review.
That's a list, right? Like those type of things. Quick notes. And then my weekly plans, my weekly schedule, what my, each of my days looks like. And then as I mentioned in the post that I wrote, I have the, the monthly calendars in the front.
I went ahead and bought those again for 2024, even though I rarely use them. I'm going to try to make sure I integrate that because it'd be pretty easy to integrate some bigger picture stuff. Like what's the pen show calendar, you know, London trip, things like that. Like just the broader overview of my year when I usually just get bogged down in the week-to-week stuff, which is what I really need the most.
So the third kind of active journal that I have or notebook that I have cropped up, I don't know, only a couple months ago. I've reinstituted the field notes back into my life. Okay. You would think the plotter could solve some of that, you know, quick jotting, note-taking, things like that.
But to me, the way I use my plotter, it's very work-focused. And so it contains a lot of pen addict stuff in there. So I tend to not use my plotter for random stuff, life stuff. I don't know, for example, like I, I wrote down a recipe in like my field notes because I had to go to the grocery store to get certain parts for those certain, you know, items for the recipe.
Like that goes in the field notes where like that doesn't really go in the plotter. I wrote down, you know, just like some of the tasks I need to do, like booking travel, like for the year. Like even though some of it's pen addict related, like just kind of like, hey, I need to jot this down while I'm doing it.
Just so I can, when I'm going to book, here's the dates I have written down so I can refer to them real quick. It's just kind of quick, passive type of stuff. So I've already filled up like half of a field notes just with random stuff in there.
You know, I was trying to track what recurring subscriptions I have, you know, those kinds of things in there. What else have I written in here? I've written some music stuff in here. I've written some video game stuff in here.
Like that kind of just like literally random stuff kind of goes in there. Because I had a notebook that I was using for my everything notebook and I found myself not using it. And I really don't understand why. Like that's one of the big questions I have is I have a real beautiful A5 notebook, hardbound, graph paper, beautiful, life, noble notebook.
And I don't choose to use it very often. And I, you can tell by the way I'm hesitating, I really don't understand why because it should be perfect for this. But I guess I don't have enough portable items that I needed this one portable item, even though my plotter is technically portable.
And it's why I like it so much. I needed something even smaller. And that's where the field notes came back in. So with the lack of use, I guess I've kind of sort of figured it out.
The lack of use of my A5 hardbound notebook. I've removed that from the workflow for now. And I have added in an old friend in the William Hanna notebook. So this is a discbound notebook that was formerly my planner.
So it has this, it had the same layout that I use in my plotter right now. But the plotter works better for me because with the William Hanna as my planner, it was... Welcome back, baby. I was not using it as efficiently. There was more blank space than I wanted.
So my plotter solves that issue perfectly. Like, that's why I'm so into this plotter narrow that I have. It works so well for me. So the William Hanna converted into a paper testing and sampling notebook to where I have a hole punch for the discbound William Hanna system.
And I would take either A5 pages or I would trim down other pages into A5 size, hole punch them. And I would put them in my notebook. And this Hanna notebook lived at my desk. I took it to pen shows because I could put paper and Tomoe River and Clairefontaine and Midori and Life and Plotter.
I had like over... I probably had a dozen types of papers in there to test, which for someone like me is super valuable, right? So I was still using it, but it was more passively if I needed to test something on Tomoe River Original 52 GSM. It was like my little library of papers.
So I got to thinking one of my hangups with this A5 notebook is I don't really have a good project-based notebook to where I can have bigger ideas explored more efficiently on paper. And that's where the beauty of the discbound system comes in as opposed to a hardbound or staple-bound notebook.
If I want to start a project, let's say I want to build a Retro 51 in 2024, which I might. I'm thinking about it. How many pages in my hardbound A5 notebook do I allocate for that? And these are the problems that I think about that bother me, right?
Some people would say, well, it doesn't matter, just write. Well, it's like, well, then I have to at least leave a page or two gap and then continue writing because I don't know how long this is going to take. And the William Hanna solves that. Plus, I can just use other dividers in the William Hanna.
I can move around the pages as I need. I can have five projects going at once and feel comfortable with the amount of pages that I'm using and not jumping all over an A5 notebook, possibly wasting a bunch of space in there. So that just hit me like one night.
I was like, oh, I literally have the perfect solution already. I just need to reform the William Hanna back into standard notebook pages. So I use the William Hanna paper, which I actually very much like. It's good for fountain pens and all kinds of pens.
So I just put now I just have one type of paper in there and a bunch of dividers. And that's going to be my project notebook going forward. And I'm actually really excited about that. So that's the new notebook, my standard A5 notebook.
I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I probably only used a third, maybe only a quarter of it. So there's a bunch of extra pages in there. So I need to think about that.
I'm not happy that I didn't finish that notebook because I finished several other large size notebooks like that before. And I don't know, maybe my needs changed to the way I'm using things. So it doesn't fit as well as hopefully this William Hanna is going to fit. I don't know.
I'm a little frustrated at myself in that, but in an unanswerable kind of way. Like I don't know what I've missed and why this didn't work as well as I had planned on it. But I feel good about everything else, right? So like I'm very, very content.
I'm using my field notes right now to write the show notes or write little notes that I've had here. And that's kind of, you know, my little podcast notes go in here sometimes too. So and, you know, when I'm done with it, I'll just go sticking in the closet somewhere and be done and grab another one.
So, yeah, it's good. So, yeah, I feel good about heading into 24 because I finished 2023 pretty solidly. I just had to fix the A5 slash project notebook situation. And I think I've done that.
So we'll see how it goes. You're definitely full of journals. Yes. I feel like I'm still even like short one. And I don't like the A5.
It would go for more long form just writing exploration. But I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. I've got what I need right now. So I'm pretty content.
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That is squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict when you decide to sign up to get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, we're going to talk about a couple of stationery resolutions later in the show, but I want to hit some news and notes real quick.
And a very sad note, a very frustrating note, our friends up at Wonder Pens in Toronto, they got robbed last week. It sucks. And I hated seeing this. I had a very emotional reaction to this and knowing Liz and John, you know, pretty well. We've got to visit with them before and obviously talk to them from time to time.
Liz is one of my favorite just writers on like in our little stationery realm. You know, she runs a business. She put out a newsletter and she's always done some really neat, really, really talented. She's a very talented writer.
And she is, she, you can tell the emotion came out in this and I appreciated her, you know, putting it all out there. How, how much it affects them personally, not from a retail store standpoint, but from a, hey, we're stationery business, you know, where this is our life.
Why would you, you know, affect our life in this way? Why are you, why would, why would someone do this? So anyway, I, I implore you to just go read this piece. you know, it's very, it's very emotional and, just to, all the, all the good vibes to, Liz and John and getting this.
She's, you know, she said it wasn't, you know, they didn't take too much, didn't steal too much. It just looked like a random kind of thing. And, you know, who knows if the people will ever be caught, but, and, and they'll get through it, but any support y'all can give them, just at, at least, going to read this piece. definitely go do that, please.
Randomly, really flipping the switch here. Lamy, right before Christmas, and I saved this since, we were off last week. Lamy Global, my good friends at Lamy, hire me Lamy, put out a post on Instagram. Hey, check out all of these pin combinations we made with the Lamy Safari.
And when I saw this, I was like, they're actually going to do it. They're putting, you know, combination pins. They're letting some mix and match happening, mix and match happen in their product line. And turns out they're not.
It was more just a, a festive kind of fun post, which it was a really good post. I'm not going to like, I'm not going to knock them for that. It was a really fun post, but they, they made like a Grinch Lamy Safari with like a green body and a red grip.
And they made, Kevin home alone one with a yellow cap, a red center and a white grip or something like that. And, you know, buddy, the pen for buddy, the elf. So they were some funny things like that, but I was really like, they really kind of got me at first.
I'm like, Ooh, look at this. They're going to do it. And this isn't exactly what I wanted them to do anyway, to take their existing parts and just allow people to mix and match. I, I, I want a little bit more than this too, but, reading the comments, a lot of, a lot of people really did not like these.
I did not like what they were doing here with the mix and match. Yeah. I, it's not, it, it's a two, it's a twofold thing for me. Right. It's like, as someone who wants Lamy to have some more creativity in their product lineup, I'm like, yes, do this.
But it was really just like simply a marketing fun thing. And it's, they're very average, right? Results because you, there's only so many colors you can mix and match, right? Like, like the Kevin one that's red, yellow, and white is like, well, that could be the McDonald's one too, right?
It's, there's, it's very, very few options than these. So, anyway, I thought that was interesting because it caught me off guard. I was like, I had to do a double take. I was like, Oh, they're doing it.
And that, spoiler alert, they're not doing it. So anyway, I just want to throw that out there. And lastly, before we get to our resolutions, this would leads in perfectly. the new chronodex 2024 is out there. I will always link to these, that Patrick Ng puts out. this is a free download for people who use the chronodex system for, tracking and planning their years. he always creates like a six, six month pack of layouts.
And I just think they're the coolest thing to look out on the planet. And what I would never use them in a million years. It's a lot. It's the most visually appealing things that I've ever seen. Yeah. So I, I always link that cause he does this for free, right?
Like there's, I think in the past there's been a product that's done like a pre-printed, but this is really kind of a role, a role your own thing. so he builds, he builds PDFs for six months of the year and, puts them out there for free just because he's an awesome person.
And I just love the concept of, of the chronodex, despite having literally zero interest in ever using something like that. So, all right. So that's going to get everyone's year started. what kind of stationery resolutions do we have from our listeners, Myke, which we requested? Yeah, we've got, we've got a handful in and want to pick out a couple.
Darren wrote in to say for, I'm switching from the Hobonichi Cousin EVEC page day, page bidet planner, which is an A5 product, to go all in on Plotter with both the A5 and Bible shaped size loaded and ready to go. I'm of two minds about it though. Hobonichi has been working well for me for a few years now, but the empty, weekend pages bothered me and something appeals about loose pages.
I can remove, scan and archive. I won't truly, truly know until I've left the EVEC behind. What do you think about this? Having used both of these products?
Yeah. So this is a, this is an interesting statement because Darren kind of nails it at the end. I'm not going to truly know until I leave the old system behind. And so there's always this kind of question or consternation about making these changes from like what's generally working, but in Darren's case had a couple of minor problems that they're trying to solve.
I've used, like you said, both the A5 and Bible site. Well, my, my narrow size is similar to the Bible size in that it's a smaller, format than the A5s. the A5 plotter didn't work for me for reasons that it sounds like it's going to work for Darren in that I didn't, I could use it like my, planner, like my William Hanna, right?
Where I have a portable, movable, restructurable, larger format planning type of notebook, which I think if I still had that old, my old A5 plotter, that might've been the choice for my planning notebook, right? Because it does allow you to have the loose pages to re lay out your notebook as needed to very, very much customize it. it's easier to scan, like that's important to Darren.
So I think that's going to work. I'm curious with the addition of the Bible size, how is there going to be a separation between what the Bible is? The Bible size is going to be for planning and calendars and the A5 going to be for journaling, planning the bigger work, like literally based on how the sizes go.
If that's the case, I think you're going to be in good shape because it sounds like there's some benefits to the plotter that would work specifically for Darren that may not work for other people. So yeah, I think it's good because in retrospect, if I still had that A5 size plotter, that could have very well been my choice for my project notebook because that's the type of flexibility that I wanted in a system.
So yeah, I think Darren's in good shape. It sounds like it's going to be good. So, we'll check back in next year, Darren, to see how it goes. Did you miss the effect or did the new system work?
Brian says, my theme for 2024 is going to be the year of exploration, which is to hopefully find new things I enjoy in all areas of my life. For the stationery portion of this, it's going to include using all of the stationery I've gathered over the years and to explore different ways of using them creatively.
The theme system journal. Thank you, Brian, is going to be at the core of this next year and we'll have many different pens and inks to help me explore the world around me. That by the way, journaling is so good for using your stuff. Like in my opinion, the best way to use your pens is to journal because you are putting aside time every day.
And like me, I use two pens. Like, so one pen writes out my headings and any other pen writes what I want to say. Like, I think journaling is a great way if you're trying to use your stuff more. Journaling is the, is the answer for that. Yeah.
And as someone who does not currently use the theme system, but has used it a lot in the past, I absolutely love it. Like it, it just hasn't fit in how I normally, how I use things now. But when I did use it, I loved every minute of using it.
So it's very valuable if you're, you know, doing like a daily kind of recap of your day and thinking about the things and having, then also having the broader scope of, you know, having your, your yearly theme continuation through the book and then having the habit trackers in the back.
Like all of it was really, really good. So I love that product. Even though like I'm not using it right now, but I think it's fantastic. And I'm not just saying that because Myke's here.
I found great value in that when I was doing it, but I just don't, I just don't journal like that right now. Maybe I'll come back to it. Maybe. It's always there for you. And Henry writes in to say, my resolution is to use the Hobonichi Techo for 2024 more consistently.
I've used my Techo for journaling, but when life got hectic, I would drop the habit. This year I've made a plan to fill in pages during hectic periods of time. I was given a deck of cards called Art Genius of a different modern artist on each card. The suits represent different modern art movements, data, surrealism, impressionism, pop art, et cetera.
I'm going to get a, I'm going to wash your card a week and print the art on days when I'm busy. My heck to the yes. So the hardest thing about journaling, and I think everyone will agree with this statement, is you need it the most when you least want to do it.
Right? The hectic periods of time are when you need to be journaling the most, and that's the hardest time to do it. So props to Henry for thinking about that. I also love the prompts idea, any type of prompts. Right? So I'm kind of using my music as my prompts to write more.
And writing more means using more stationery, using more pens, using more inks, using more notebooks, maybe just typing it digitally, you know, whatever. So like, that's been my prompts recently. And then having these card prompts are really, really good. And, you know, Henry's talking about, I'm going to wash your card a week and print the art on the days when I'm busy.
Yeah. I just, I love that. So like, I am going to try to do like one music album review per week and post that on my micro.blog. And I'm talking like 100 to 200 word review. I'm not, I'm not pitchfork over here.
And I don't have that vocabulary to talk about music that well. But like, I'm in a, you know, write a hundred words on why I like a certain album once a week. Like, that's going to be one of my things. I've also, I've started a song a day playlist to where, you know, if I find something new or listen to an old song, whatever I've listened to during the day, I'm going to pick one song and throw it on a playlist.
And, you know, that's an idea I also got from the Crucial Tracks, which we'll put a link in the, in the show notes. So the writer of Crucial Tracks is, this is their third year in a row doing that. And it's like, it just seems like a really fun thing for someone who listens to as much music as I do.
That would be an easy thing. And then I'm trying to incorporate these thoughts into how I use my stationery and track all that. So it goes back into the year of recording. So there you go.
So do you want to know my stationery resolutions? Yes, I do. I'm going to unpack, move and use is the way I'm thinking about my products. I still have a bunch of stuff in boxes from when we moved on the loft. I'm going to get it all out and move it to the studio and then use it because that's where I use the majority of my stuff now.
And also I want to create in the studio some space for design. I want to get like a specific desk, like table kind of thing that I want to put in, which won't have any computers on it and will just be like space for me to iterate and draw and then to use design focused stationery more to let me do that.
I actually did this today, Brad. I was working on another layout for the sidekick notepad kind of platform, right? So we have the calendar version now and I have another idea and I was like using a craft knife and cutting up pieces of paper and moving them around and doing the whole thing.
So I want to, but like I have to like take Adina's desk and use that, but it's not what I want. So I want like a proper table desk thing here where I can have that stuff and have all my design inspo stuff and just make it focus for that.
Perfect. Do you still use that IKEA? Was it the Alex drawer shelf thing? I have them. Yeah. And I have a bunch of stuff in them. Yeah. I have them here at the studio and I have one at home which has stuff in it, but I'm going to bring a bunch of that stuff to the studio.
Cool. Cool. Cool. I don't have many stationery resolutions, but I do have one particular one, which may sound odd coming from me, but I want to use my fountain pens more. And I say that because I use as many standard pens as anybody I know who really enjoys fountain pens.
I use ballpoints and roller balls and gel ink pens and pencils more than I use fountain pens. And I have all these super awesome fountain pens. And this is part of like, you know, kind of curating how many pens I own and things like that. You know, I want to use the pens that I love so much.
Like there's a reason why I've kept these pens and there's a reason why these pens are important to me. You got to use them. So I found last year, I probably used fountain pens like more than most people. You know, I'm probably in the 1% of fountain pen users, but relative to the amount of fountain pens that I have, I didn't use them that much compared to the other pens.
You know, given as much writing as I do, much handwriting as I do, I would tend to reach towards other pen choices, pen style choices. So I want to be more consistent in my fountain pen usage next year, which is a funny thing for me to say, but it's a very true situation that I'm in right now when I think about it more broadly.
So yeah, that is something I'm going to focus on. You know, have real intent when I'm using these fountain pens for, you know, to make sure I'm getting the good use out of them because they deserve it. Very cool. All right. Are we done for today? I think that's it.
Let's wrap it up here. If people have their own themes or stationery resolutions or things that they want to achieve for this year that they would like to send in to us, great way to do that. Just go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send them in along with your STPA questions.
Maybe we'll get to some of those on our next episode. So if you have some stuff, please send it in to us. If you would like to get in touch and find out what we're doing, go to penaddict.com. You can find Brad online.
He's on micro.blog. Is it brad.micro.blog? Correct. Correct. Yep. So you can find Brad's stuff that he was talking about earlier on. There'll be a link to that in the show notes, which are over at relay.fm.penaddict.com.
You can find those in your podcast app of choice. You can find Brad on twitch.tv slash penaddict. He's penaddict on Instagram and threads. I am iMyke. IMYKE. And we spoke about the Theme System Journal a bunch of times in this episode.
You can find that over at cortexbrand.com. Thanks to Pen Chalet and Squarespace for their support of this week's episode. But thank you for listening and for joining us as we start yet another year of the Pen Addict podcast. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. you