The Pen Addict 724/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	724
Title:	Hotdog on a Ring
Release Date:	July 9th, 2026
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 724
Audio File:	Audio Episode 724
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 724
Length:	6565 min <br />1.083 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 724. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Enigma Stationery. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you doing today?

Myke Hurley: I'm good, man. I'm very good. I'm excited for today's show. There's a lot of stuff going on in today's show.

Product Focus

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, very product-focused. I like talking about products, right? Even some that are not in hand yet, some that are freshly tested. So yeah, it's a very, very product-focused show. I was excited putting this together, honestly, because there's a lot of cool stuff to talk about. Should we get right into it? Yes. Let's do a follow-up product conversation. Last week, I talked about the Sailor K. Saraw, their erasable competitor to the Pilot Friction. And I got my review up on the blog. So I went through my initial thoughts on the podcast last week. And nothing really changed from that conversation. If you listened to last week's podcast, pretty much everything in that article was just an elaboration. On the points I was discussing during the podcast. One thing that we kind of landed on in the post-show last week is where this product sits in the hierarchy of the Plus companies, which we didn't mention during the show. And I tried to put that a little bit into the article. So Plus owns Sailor, the pen company. But Plus has also acquired Pentel. So we talked about how some of the shapes and designs of this are Pentel based on the K-Sara. The grip section is a Pentel Energel grip section. The refill is a Pentel Energel shape. Why didn't Plus release the K-Sara as a Pentel product? And that's kind of what we were discussing post-show last week. And I was really wracking my brain on that. And that seems like a better fit unless Sailor's standard pens are bigger in Japan than Pentel standard pens. I would find that hard to believe, quite honestly. Sailor's never had a home run standard pen like the Pentel has had an Energel. That's a home run product, right? Pentel's mechanical pencils are home run products. Like these are products that you just pick up and they're fantastic. Why wasn't the K-Sara under the Pentel brand, given that these are essentially the same company under the same umbrella, right? Obviously, they're operating separately, but there's clearly some cross-pollination with the parts of this pen. I don't know. It doesn't change the fact that it's not a good product. But I don't know. I would like Pentel to go up against Pilot in this as opposed to Sailor. It's very, very confusing.

Brad Dowdy: The long and the short of it is it's actually really bad. This is a bad writing experience, right? But I hope they stick with it. Like friction. Like the friction was not good when it started. And it's improved to where the friction is at the point where it's just a good pen, whether it erases or not, right? And that's always the caveat with erasable gel ink pens is it might erase, but it might not be enjoyable to actually write with, right? So you never get the chance to get to the erasing part because it's just a poor experience. That's where the case arise now. The friction, you can just use it as your gel ink pen, whether you need it to erase or not. It's just a good pen. So anyway, that's my follow-up on that.

Myke Hurley: My feeling on like, you know, why does it sit where it sits? I just bet this was being worked on by Sailor before the Pentel thing happened. And then the Sailor team just wouldn't let go of it. That's what I would assume happened. Probably. This feels like a corporate like team issue because it doesn't make any sense. This product doesn't look like a Sailor product. It doesn't act like a Sailor product. It doesn't make any sense to be a Sailor product. Yeah. Now Sailor does make sense. But like especially when they have Pentel sitting right there, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Sailor does make your standard on the shelf gel pens, right? They've never been good, but they exist, right? So there is a lineup of, you know, your $2 and $3 gel ink pens and some things like that. They've just never been, they've never been worth more than a quick peek at when the competition is just dunking on you left and right with their products, right? So yeah. But there was obviously at some point there had to be some cross-pollination because it's literally a Pentel part in this pen, which is funny. Instead of going all the way. So I did some more writing samples you can see in there. It's just super railroady. It's just a bad, bad experience and gunky and messy, unenjoyable pen. And, you know, that's just, that's just it. I just wait and we'll, we'll see. We'll see if they try to go. And I said all this, I didn't even get into the design. Like they, they really did a poor job with the eraser. I didn't even want to belabor that point. It was just like, well.

Myke Hurley: The pen is just ugly anyway. It just looks like a, it looks like a, like a knockoff Sharpie.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It looks like a knockoff Sharpie. That's exactly what it looks like. So anyway, that's our follow-up. We said a lot of what we had to say. We did mention those little extra confusions. We were, we were thinking about last week, a post-show that I didn't get to. But anyway, do you think someday, Myke, we'll see the Kailer, Sailor K. Saraw in the 2026 or in the ISOT Awards winners category? Do you think the Sailor K. Saraw ever has a chance?

Myke Hurley: I'm going to be honest with you, Brad. I don't remember exactly what the ISOT Awards award specifically. Yeah. International stationery something, something.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Like I don't, I didn't even look. I just know, I just know the ISOT, the ISOT stationery awards. So sure. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mean, I think it's, I think it's possible, you know, anything's possible, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Good for you. Good for you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You may be anything's possible because they do have, I'm wondering, I'm looking at this list here. We're going to go over a few of these products because I'm, of course, have a huge interest in this. I was trying to see if any of these products were like an update of like a classic product. And I'd say most of these are new. Most of these are newer. So the stationery of the year was announced by the ISOT organization, whatever that means. Roll your own acronym there, I guess. And so I've seen some, you know, Instagrams and some articles come out on the products. And I always like to take a look at the products. So they have basically a grand prize winner and then they have different like subcategories of small winners. So it is the spiral note basic from Morimont. So what this is, I think I got my first one, first samples of these from Morimont. It has to be two years ago when they were first coming to the American market. And what Morimont did was made like a school notebook with their high quality paper in it, right? It's just your regular metal spiral bound notebook that like some of them are like four and five dollars that contain like some of the best paper you'll ever use in your life. So it's... I'm still trying to figure out why they... This is a product I would pick to win. I'm surprised it won like looking at the rest of the like category winners here, like the specialty products. This is the most standard basic product. And I kind of love it.

Myke Hurley: And there's nothing. Like it does nothing for me. So I don't understand it because like...

Brad Dowdy: It's almost like a price point winner, right? This is like the best bang for your buck product. But there's... Yeah, it literally is basic. And the pictures that they use...

Myke Hurley: There's no innovation in this product. Not that there should have to be. But that's why I find it odd to win an award like this. Maybe I don't understand what the Stationery of the Year awards is like, you know. Okay. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Four categories. Functionality, design, sustainability, and trend. Grand Prix and excellent award products. They're like one product from each of the... One product from those categories will be chosen as the Grand Prix winner. So, you know, it won probably one of the categories, right? And then they just thought it was the best of all of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, which is crazy. Like what would it be? This may... Sustainable? I don't know. It like checks all the boxes for functionality, sustainable design, and trend. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Look, this is like a 10 out of 10 notebook. I just... It's a little bit odd. I'm still like scratching my head. It's like I love this notebook so much. I literally have a stack of them around. I've got some in use. I've done lots of reviews using this paper because it's so good. A little bit of a surprise. Surprise winner. I mean, good for them. Like I'm excited for them. But yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Yeah. But long story short, you people listening should try the Morrowind Spiral Note Basic. I've recommended this notebook a lot over the years. Like I'm pretty sure I got these in 2024. That's the other thing that I'm trying to think about.

Myke Hurley: I've got the acronym. I know what ISOT stands for and you would never get this. Okay. So ISOT, right? It stands for International Stationary and Office Products Fair Tokyo.

Myke Hurley: There's a lot of actual letters in there, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: A lot of... What's the whole acronym if you used every one of them?

Myke Hurley: ISOPFT would be the full. Okay. It's the International Stationary and Office Products Fair of Tokyo. So that is what the event is. And this event has awards. This is similar. Like the London Stationary Fair has an awards ceremony. Our friend of the show, we keep mentioning Tessa, won Retailer of the Year last year. Like in the most recent one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And this is also not fully related into the Red Dot Awards, which is more designery and more pay-to-submit-based type of thing. Like, you know, that's a pretty common setup for some of the awards. Yeah. These might be two. Like I didn't totally look at this. But this is directly stationary, like the Japanese stationary awards. So Mormon Notebook.

Brad Dowdy: I'm still shaking my head. Like, cool. I guess. Cool. It's amazing. But I don't get it. So let's get into some of the other products. And you'll see, like, some of the – these are more like, okay, these are new innovations. They could be good. They could be bad. But they're at least, like, a new product. Like, a couple of them are, like, really dumb ideas. But whatever. We'll see. So a couple I wanted to mention. The Carl Refill Maker 3.5. Myke, this link has been a nightmare for, like, two days now. I'm not getting proper resolution for the link. So your mileage may vary. It looks like it's working for you. It is. But what this is – so if you take, like, what we know as our plotter systems now in the U.S., what the system Techo was in Japan that this came from, the plotter systems, and that is still super popular over there, is basically a six-hole punch type of notebook. And you could buy – and there's other varieties. There's a five-hole size and different things.

Brad Dowdy: You can buy pre-punched paper or you can get something like the Carl Refill Maker and punch your own, which is what I do. I don't have the Carl Refill Maker. But, yes, like, since I like plotters and since I like a lot of different paper, I am going to buy a hole punch that allows me to put in bank paper or Tomoe River paper or Kanopas paper. So – and this one is – it's got a lot of little, I don't know, creative bits to make you, you know, get the right size paper and do different things with what you need. So I can see this being a super useful item, especially in the Japanese market, where this type of ring binder system, Techo, is very, very popular.

Myke Hurley: It's just the best brand name. Carl. Carl? Carl. Carl. Yeah, Carl Rules. This is great. Carl. It's good. I have a Carl. I have a Carl hole punch.

Sun Star Scissors

Brad Dowdy: Yep. This is my grand prize award winner, Myke, the Sun Star – all right, I'm going to go with this. Stickle? Yeah. What are we – stickle? Stickle?

Myke Hurley: Stickyle?

Brad Dowdy: Stickyle. Stickyle. Stickyle. It's stick. Y-L-E. All right.

Myke Hurley: Straight up, this thing is a shank, right?

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Sure. Right? I mean, it's not that sharp on the end. It's less sharp than a traditional pair of scissors. The other – the metal cutter one is more of a shank in this list, which we're not going to cover, but there's a different one here. Y'all can go see on the list.

Myke Hurley: It's not a shank. I mean, Brad, there's like –

Brad Dowdy: This is more of a medical device than a shank. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Or a shiv, maybe, is the phrase I'm looking for. Those are the same things. You shank someone with a shiv, I think.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, visually, when it's closed, it looks very stabby.

Myke Hurley: Because also, to get the blades out to cut, and they're very rounded for obvious reasons, you push them out, right? Like – Yeah, yeah. Like, ah. That's how I imagine it.

Brad Dowdy: I think you probably have to make those sound effects when you do it, which is why it should have won. So, what this is, and why I think this should be the winner, is because of the context of the stationary world that we're in right now. It's very, like, journaling-focused products.

Myke Hurley: This is also just a very clever design.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So, what it is, is you have your traditional sticker – excuse me, scissor blades, but the tips of the scissors are converted into a tweezer shape. So, they, like, are – like, the blades kind of end and then shift into a tweezer blade that allows you to do picking up of stickers and stamps and washi on the front end without cutting things with the sticker. So, it's like a two-in-one, and then it's retractable, essentially.

Myke Hurley: I didn't even notice the little picky-up part, but I thought the smart part of it was the retractable. You know, like, the blades fully retract. And to me, that was clever, right? Like, seeing that, I was like, oh, that's a very nice design. And then, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, other companies have done that. I'm sure. Other companies have done those blades. I like this.

Myke Hurley: This is like, you know, obviously, this starts with how do you not make it so dangerous? You round the edges. Or what if there's no blade at the front? And then it's like, well, what if there's no blade at the front? And you end up getting to this point of like, yeah, it's very clever, nice little design, nice product, bunch of different colors. I genuinely think, I think we often do a good job of being able to try and translate visuals to audio, you know, like for the show. But I think in this scenario, not possible to do that. You have to go and take a look at it. I just got a little bit distracted that Sunstar, the company that owns this, that makes this product. It's owned by Bandai Namco?

Brad Dowdy: I think I did know that. Yeah. Because they've done some. They've done some collaborations that I've seen in the past. Nothing ever too interesting, right? Right. Like, I feel like they're leaving a lot on the table. Bandai Namco is a video game company.

Myke Hurley: They're responsible for Pac-Man, but they also have a vast array of products of their own, and they also publish games too. That is incredibly strange.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Do you think they can lean into that a little bit more?

Myke Hurley: Oh, they've got some bluey stationery, not related to Bandai Namco in any way, but I just went to their product, and they make bluey stickers and stuff for Japan.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Sunstar is pretty popular. I've used and reviewed some of their pen cases before. I will 100% get this pair of scissors. Yeah. It's just a neat little thing. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm looking through their products page here, and there's a lot of collaborations with different brands, but I'm not seeing any Bandai Namco products. Yeah. That's wild.

Brad Dowdy: It's caught me. I swear in the past, I've been caught by like one or two things, but in a very simplistic way. Yeah. Not like heavily character-based.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure they do the occasional Pac-Man thing, but I just feel like they should have a whole line of Bandai Namco. Totally. Like, you know. Mm-hmm. That's incredibly strange to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Cool website, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Very cool. All right. Next one that I wanted to mention is something we talked about. I don't know if you'll remember this. It was just kind of like an in-passing thing. I've talked about it somewhere, whether it was here or on stream or wherever. It's the Secura Ball Sign, which is their gel ink pen. And this is called the ID Single. And what this is, and actually, I think this came up on another awards thing, Myke. It's a set of six pens with a gradient range of just black inks. Yes, we've spoken about this. Yeah. This is not original at all.

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm looking at their page. They're like a blue, green, purple, but they're still black?

Black Plus Inks

Brad Dowdy: Yes. They're black. Right. They're black plus, which we've talked about this for years. A lot of companies have done black plus color inks, either gel or ballpoint inks. But the theory here is the marketing, right? It's like you buy this one set and you have this range and it goes from black to gray, then black to blue, then black to green, and on and on and on. They're really cool, but it's more the marketing that's a little bit of a weird thing. But I love the concept of your black plus inks, right? These are my favorite colors of inks, like the blue-black looks amazing and the purple-black looks amazing. So maybe I'll try these. If these see some increased popularity and become more widely available, maybe I'll grab a set.

Myke Hurley: I consider myself a grown-up in general, and I think that I try to keep my humor relatively highbrow. Sure. I just can't get over bull sign. Yeah, it's a rough one. I can't get over it, man. Every time I see it, it makes me chuckle.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, it is in the ball-knock zone. Ball-knock zone.

Myke Hurley: Ball sign. It must just be something about the word ball when talking about pens that I just can't get over. Yeah. It's obviously ballpoint. I have no problem with ballpoint. Yeah. But ball-knock zone, that's the best one. Ball sign, also funny. Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: And why are we doing the ID with the lowercase i and the uppercase d and the whole thing there? Yeah. All right. Last one I want to talk about, Myke.

Brad Dowdy: How many of the Sonic Digitox, the routine time locker, do you think get broken on a daily basis?

Myke Hurley: I think this is a very clever... I like this product. Answer the question.

Brad Dowdy: Answer my question.

Myke Hurley: I mean, don't you just have... Okay. Explain what it is, because otherwise there's no context for why I'm answering this question.

Brad Dowdy: It's basically like a pencil box for your desk, but it contains your phone, your mobile phone, and it's a timed locker for you to put away your phone on the desk. You lock away your phone in this device, this little plastic-looking pencil box thing, and then it only comes back out when the timer's up. Like, I'll break this within like a day.

Myke Hurley: See, Brad, I feel like, you know, in general, you are a young man at heart, right? Like, I feel like you stay down with the youth. I feel like you're missing the youth on this one, my friend. This is like... There are so many apps and services now that do these things, and they're very popular with young people.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Give me a brick. I'll take the brick. I don't want the phone to go away. I like this, though. I like this. It's an add-on. It's a storage locker. Like, I actively want...

Myke Hurley: You can see it's like the lady, she's doing her studying. It's in front of her. It's a clock. She's like, you know, I've only got to study for X amount of time more, and then I can go back on Instagram or whatever. Yeah. I actively want to fight this problem. I know. It's odd. You really feel... You got some feelings about this one.

Brad Dowdy: Like, I guess my feeling is like, do you... Like, can you not control yourself enough to where you need to lock the phone?

Myke Hurley: Yes. I know. Why do many of these things exist? I know.

Brad Dowdy: There's a whole market. I know. You're not wrong. Give me a brick. I'll buy a brick before I buy a locker for my phone. I'm 100% throwing this across the room.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. You get a little hammer to smash it open with. You can sell that as an add-on. Good.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. Honestly, pretty cool. Pretty cool concept.

Myke Hurley: I like it.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. Those are the ones I wanted to talk about. There's more on this page. I should go look at it. Like, the parallelogram eraser. Like, that's not a thing. Like, don't do this. There's like a lot of different eraser designs. It's basic. The color-changing memo pad in here. I was like, oh, cool. What is this? Well, it's not a color-changing memo pad. It's a cover for your memo pad block that has different colors, and it has a translucent sheet on the top. So, when you tear away one color, like it's yellow on the top, and you tear that away, then it's blue underneath. It's like, okay. Like, is this winning? Is this what winning looks like, Myke? I don't know. So, anyway, it's always fun to go through these lists. Yes. Because then you have a time locker for your phone, and just randomly-

Myke Hurley: You never know what you're going to find.

Brad Dowdy: It is for the kids, Myke. It is for the kids. So, wow. Good stuff, I-S-A-O-F-T.

Myke Hurley: I-S-O-F-P-T.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Good job with the awards.

Myke Hurley: This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling an existing business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. It's so easy to get started with Squarespace. I really love their website building tools. I love that you can go through their templates. You can choose what you're looking for. You know, like the kind of business you have. You're like, oh, I want a website like this, and I have a bunch of templates for it, and they fill that information out for you. You can also now kind of just tell them. You just type what you're looking for, and it will make recommendations thanks to their Blueprint system. But I love then how customizable everything is with Squarespace, that you can go in, choose your fonts, choose your colors, make your layout look exactly the way that you want with no coding experience needed. This is why I've been coming to them for years and years and years. They also help you make smarter business decisions because they have an analytics system that's built right in. So you can keep track of the stats that matter with Squarespace with their intuitive built-in analytics tools that make it super easy for you to review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or product sales. I've also been really impressed with their email marketing tools. So something I think is very cool, you can have like a blog at Squarespace, and you can write up your posts. It's very easy to do. But then you could also send them out to your email subscribers if you wanted to as well. You can set up pages. You can collect email addresses, collect information, and you can send those out. And it's a really nice feature as well of Squarespace with one of the many, many features that they have available. Go and check it out for yourself by going to squarespace.com slash penaddict and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict. You'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, and you'll be showing your support for the show. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict with the offer code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. A thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay.

Brad Dowdy: All right, Myke, we got our shout-out of the week. Shout-out of the week. Extra Fine Writing, which I believe has been in the shout-outs of the week before. But I wanted to bring this up because they did a review or they did a post on this ink syringe cleaning filling system that I can vouch for. And I think everyone should consider this product. They're now available on Goldspot and things like that. Back in the day when these first came out, they were really expensive and they weren't as easy to clean. But now you can get these little syringe-based, not as medically inclined syringes. Like I use syringes all the time. Blunt-nose syringes to ink pens, to clean pens, to flush ink out of pens. You can get like a three-pack of these for like six bucks. And it's not the craziest.

Brad Dowdy: It's pretty wild in relation to like your other cleaning tools, but it's a really good product. So I just wanted to shout this out for anyone who does a lot of inking and cleaning of pens to have this syringe-based, this spring-based syringe. It like works really, really well. And just go read Extra Fine Writing in general. They do some of the most hilarious like stationary writing around. So go check them out.

Myke Hurley: Nice.

First Look Products

Brad Dowdy: All right. I got a few first look products I wanted to drop in here real quick. These are probably like pre-review thoughts. All of them have literally been in my hands. Some of them about less than 24 hours. Some a little bit longer than that. The first one is one we mentioned. The Uniball.

Brad Dowdy: Is it called And Not? Are we going to do this right now? It's And Not. Yeah. I don't know what else you'd call it.

Myke Hurley: Like I don't think you would call it like Ampersand Not.

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of how you connect the words Uniball and Not. Yeah. Or is it Uniball and And Not? No.

Myke Hurley: It's a product.

Brad Dowdy: Is it Uniball X and Not?

Myke Hurley: Don't do that to me. Because it's not, right? Like it's just, you don't call it. It's And Not. Yeah, but you don't have any problems saying Jetstream. You know, like what is this? Is it Uniball plus Jetstream? Oh, I can't get my head around it. You know, it's just And Not. It's just a sub-brand.

Brad Dowdy: So did Uniball and And Not do a collaboration?

Myke Hurley: No, And Not is a Uniball line, isn't it?

Brad Dowdy: No. And Not's a brand. Like Blue Bottle Coffee.

Myke Hurley: Okay, well then I misunderstood from what you did.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no.

Myke Hurley: Okay, then I understand the confusion.

Brad Dowdy: Now Brad's a problem.

Myke Hurley: No, no, I get it now. Because it's two companies. I thought that this was just a brand like Jetstream.

Brad Dowdy: No, oh, no. Oh, okay, I see. No, no, no, no. No, this is a literal, this is an outside the building collaboration. Which they do pretty infrequently. Yeah. I'm just saying, listen, And Not is the problem. It's their fault for making a name like that. Like I get the name, but then when you start mixing, like this is what this podcast is about. We care more about the nomenclature than the product. So let's talk about the product. Okay. This is, the reason why this came up on my radar is because Uniball doesn't do this a lot. They've done a couple, they did one a couple years ago with a furniture maker where they made a wood grip, Jetstream multi-pin barrel grips. They're fantastic. I forget the name of the brand, Sergeant McKay. But anyway, they don't do this a lot.

Myke Hurley: I just wanted to say for the, because I went and checked, right? So Jacob says, quoting, the first release from Uniball's new lifestyle-focused sub-brand, And Not. Really? So I think you've got this wrong, Brad. I'm sorry to say, because also if you Google Ant Not, nothing comes up except for Uniball.

Brad Dowdy: Really? Okay. I'm very wrong then. Yeah. Shout out Jacob. I guess I just overlooked it. Shout out me. Well, I mean, you're- Shout out me in this scenario. No, let's say Brad apologizes. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I was wrong. But also, no, shout out Myke for doing the work beforehand, right? Yeah, I'm trying to avoid- I would have just let you go if I wouldn't have done all my research, you know? I'm clearly, I'm clearly working around- Brad, I'm doing my own research now. This is a problem. Uh-oh, uh-oh. I'm doing-

Brad Dowdy: Well, good.

Myke Hurley: Brad, I'm just asking the questions, all right? Yeah. I'm doing my own research.

Brad Dowdy: So, gosh. This is going to be interesting then, okay? This- Then I'm actually going to go harder at this pen than I was before.

Myke Hurley: Uh-oh.

Brad Dowdy: If this is an in-house sub-brand, is that what we want to call it then?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Whatever you would call Jetstream.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Huh. Interesting. Okay.

Fashion-Forward Stationery

Myke Hurley: They're just creating a new brand where the products are more fashion-forward, it would appear to me.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So, that's where the stationary challenges come in, right? Yeah. So, what this is, we're finally getting there five minutes later. It's an attachable pen designed to be like a portable attached to like a bag, a backpack, a pocket, a lanyard type of thing. It's a pen with a sleeve. This is not a unique concept, right? It's a pen with a sleeve that has like an attachment point, either, you know, a carabiner, in this case, a little loop, um, loop with, um, like an attachment, uh, clicker on there. You can just, you know, bend it in and click, clip it to something. But what they've done is really- Uniball is definitely into the, the chunky, their chunky phase of pens where they're making like the Uniball 1P. Didn't you get that one from Tesla's shop? Did you get the 1P, the short one?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Little guy.

Brad Dowdy: Uh, yeah. So it's short and chunky, right? This is, this is that type of product in what's supposed to be like a backpacking or portable type of pen. And I have a lot of questions on like this, the design philosophy here. One, it's big, right? When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be smaller, like half the size, like just in depth and diameter and dimensions, right? Shrink this down by half. Because this is not a subtle product, right? So this is, when I think of this type of product, I want it to be a little bit more subtle because I'm attaching it to something. I'm, you know, packing it in something. I'm attaching it to my lanyard. This is going to be bigger than like your lanyard badge. It's like, so I have the orange one. Um, you know, and I, I apologize for the visual. It's like a hot dog on a ring, right? It's very large.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And it stands out so much that it kind of gets in the way of what it's trying to accomplish, I think. And that's where I feel like it's right there that it could have been like 50% smaller and would have been an even better product. I'm saying all this in that I'm actually coming around to enjoying this product. It's hard to get over the size. The ring is super big.

Brad Dowdy: Then this is all attached. The barrel is ultra light. So it's a weird feel. So like the ring is heavy and the barrel is light. So it's not like, uh, there's no density to the barrel, either the sleeve or the pin body itself. And then the pin body, the pin attaches, it's got a magnet on the tip. The magnet's really nice. I don't think it's the pin's going to fall out because this is designed to be carried externally. Generally speaking, like you can hook it to the internals of a bag and be fine. But this is generally designed to attach to something like this would be a great like retail worker pin, right? Or trade show pin.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. On the American website, they show it like attached to like a waiter's apron.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So like, I'm going to take this to stationary fest when we go in a couple of weeks because I want to continue to test it before like I review it more. But if they're going to make, they've tried to like stylize it so they could charge you $35 for it, right? When it's supposed to just be like this functional item. And I don't know. It's a, so I got mine from a friend that was traveling back from Japan. They picked it up in Narita airport and it still had the yen price sticker on it. When you look at the yen cost, I don't have it right in front of me. But when I did that conversion, it was more of a $22 pin. Like if you did it, if you bought it in Japan, that's like your, your yen to US dollar translation. 35 is a lot because if you go back to the apron picture, this is only a quick jotting pen barrel. When you pull it from its sheath, it's short, right? Even for my small, medium sized hands, you want the pen to be a quarter inch to a half inch longer to do any type of long-term writing other than just, hey, let me take your order. Or, hey, I'm at a trade show. Let me get your information type of pen. But I guess if you're just marketing as that, I think it works. I'm just very, very flummoxed on this whole design. Like I want to, I want to see the design conversation behind this pen. Like I want to see what the, I do too. And I was giving it a really hard time at first. The more I actually use it and play with it, the more I'm coming around to it. I do think it's a little expensive for what it is.

Myke Hurley: Sure. I think they've gone for a bold design because it's to be worn. Yes. So it's making a statement. Where if they made something super thin, like it just, it wouldn't be making the same statement. Where this is a big bold color and, you know, like I think it's making a, it's making itself known.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So Chris is bringing up in the chat a point I made when I was, I unboxed this yesterday on stream and was just having all these thoughts out loud. Why would I pay for the $35 for this as opposed to buying a 1P and clipping it to my shirt for $3.50?

Myke Hurley: Because you can't hang it. Like that's the reason. I can't.

Brad Dowdy: It's just not about a carabiner. I'm literally hanging it to my shirt via the clip.

Myke Hurley: But it doesn't have a carabiner.

Brad Dowdy: Like I know that that's not the answer you're looking for, but that is the answer. Then I think they designed this improperly. Why? It's, it's way too large, right? This is like, if you're, if you're a retail worker, this is going to get in the way because of its size.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think this was more designed to be hung on bags.

Influencer Pens

Brad Dowdy: I think this is designed to be like an influencer pen, right? Well, yeah. Which we're going to get to in a minute. Yeah. Yeah. Which I'm good.

Myke Hurley: Like that's not a looks.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. That's not a knock. Like I'm into this.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I just, I like, I want to know the design brief on this one because if and not is going to be a sub brand, then yeah, I'm all in on this and they're just going to lean into this style and yes, I'm here for it. I want that.

Myke Hurley: I think everything you need to know is in the phrase, this is a lifestyle brand.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: So now like typical pen usability, just forget about it. Gone out the window because it's not what this is about.

Brad Dowdy: I think that's fair. I think you're right. Myke was right. I like this pen. That's what I'm trying to like in the end, the more I've used, I've literally haven't put this down for like a day and I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to hate this. This is weird. I don't like the design to now it's like, well, why do I keep reaching for it, Myke? And why do I keep trying to figure it out? And why am I trying to find things to clip it to? And why am I deciding, you know, where I'm going to take it?

Myke Hurley: And I actually think the 1P is a very good like analog to this product. It should not look like this or feel like this to hold the 1P. Like it doesn't make any sense, really. Like, but it works. And I keep grabbing it and I enjoy it because it's weird. Yes. And I think this is a similar product in that regard. Like they've made it bold and bright and inviting. It's got a big chunky clip on it. They didn't need to make the clip so chunky, but they did. They didn't need to attach the pen to the clip with material like woven fabric. It could be in other ways. But they've wanted to make this pen easy and fun to grab and also to make a statement. And I think they've achieved it. I like it.

Brad Dowdy: I like it too. So I'm going to keep carrying it. Maybe it's a pen show pen and like I can attach it to things.

Myke Hurley: Attach it to your like body cross bag or something, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. That's what I was playing with yesterday. Yeah. My new bag that I got for the strip though, like this is a complete digression. It doesn't have like any external strap points. So I was trying to attach it to a zipper. So it might be internal. Yeah, cut a hole in the bag. That's what I'll do. So anywho, last thing, just the writing experience. When you talk about the 1P, the 1P is about three quarters of an inch longer. Yeah. So everything about the 1P works, which is why I feel a little bit let down about the little shorty.

Myke Hurley: I don't think I would like to use this for how short it is.

Brad Dowdy: Unless you're just going to like jot something, which is fine. Yeah. You know, maybe when we do our interviews and Yoseka, this is my note taking pen.

Myke Hurley: Or like what's going to happen is you'll be wearing and I'll just keep grabbing it from you. That'll be fine. Just like take it from you all the time. You're like, let me just write something down and then just put it back.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So apparently my homework is to learn more about and not.

Myke Hurley: Clearly. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'll shoot Jacob a message because I just completely. I would like to thank Jacob. I was thinking about it too much.

Myke Hurley: You know, I watched the video when I was on my way to the office this morning and I'm really pleased that I did. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: We have a link in the show notes for everyone. Jacob does a great job. He just got the multi-pen Zento signature. So I haven't watched that video yet. So look forward to that soon. So. All right. I knew I'd have a lot of nonsense to say. Like I really didn't say anything about this pen. And other than like I'm I've I've already run the gamut in like the first 24 hours of my thoughts on this pen. And in the end, I've come around to like I think I like it.

Myke Hurley: So one pen that almost no one has heard of. Sorry, I have to interrupt you just one second and then we'll carry on. You just say about the Zento thing, like just like the views on that video are way higher than a lot of his recent videos. It's like, oh, yeah, it's just like proving the Zento hype. It's just in pure numbers.

Brad Dowdy: Totally. That's totally probably go back and look at his first Zento. If you're on his video page, go back and see like the original Zento review and just 1.1 million views. Yeah, that's insane. Right. That compared to unbelievable. Wow. So like this. So like the and not. How many views does that have? No way it has 10,000 yet.

Myke Hurley: It's new, but the and not video has.

Myke Hurley: Makes a lot of videos, huh? He does that one. I don't. Oh, I'm looking at. I'm looking at popular. 4,500.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. It's crazy. The Zento is crazy.

Myke Hurley: His three most popular videos are Zento videos.

Uniball Pens

Brad Dowdy: It's insane. It is absolutely insane. Like what has happened? Like that's an entire podcast. Yeah. It just, it makes no sense to me. But shout out Uniball. That gives them the opportunity to make these and not products, right? Yep. I like that. If that's what the Zento's bringing me, bring it on.

Myke Hurley: Shout out Jacob too.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Shout out Jacob. He's done a great job with the video. He's like, I like that he's leaned into the short video format. He does an exceptional job. Yes. As opposed to like the podcasting and the blog posts. He's really good at the short video format. Like these are all like three and five minute videos. They're beautiful. He's so good. So good. All right. This is Japan related, Myke. Okay. A friend of the show, Josh, lives in Japan as a, he makes his own pens. It's called Matome Collection. He has sent in feedback on different things in the past for the show. That's always been very helpful. And he wanted to send me one of his pens and he did. So this is, Matome Collection is the name of the company. And the model of the pen that he sent me is Ikimashio. And it's a kind of a long, short pen, right? It's like a Kaweco sport in that it's short when it's capped, but it's full size, you know, when you post it. And it's so interestingly done. So think of him as just like, like the traditional makers that we talk about in the U.S. making, you know, acrylic pens, ebonite pens. He's a small maker making his own materials and turning his own pens. So what kind of enamored me about this is not just the shape of this pen, which I'll get into. It's called a pocket pen, but it's, you know, obviously full size when you write with it. It's tiny. Is that he did something. And if you look at the pictures on the Ikimashio pocket pen, you can't even see it on the barrel unless you look really closely. The back end of the barrel has like a half depth threading for the cap to post securely on the back. And it, I, I'm like, it works so well. Like you don't have these big chunky threads to attach the pen on the back of the pen, but it's this subtle look. And it kind of fits with the aesthetic of the pen because like there's some translucency in the barrel. You can see some other threading. And I don't know, it's just very smooth, but tactile. It's very interesting in how it works and it works super well. It attaches just like instantly. You don't have to mess or fidget with it. And then the one he sent me, again, I got this sent for free. So, you know, take my, take my words for, for what they are. But the material that he used, let me pull up the link here.

Brad Dowdy: For this particular model that I have. And I think the, he did a series called Craft Indigo. So there's a black one and a blue one. And he basically uses, there's this indigo dye that he's able to acquire from a manufacturer there. And then hand grinds the dye and makes them into these acrylics. And so you're having some of this, you know, historic Japanese indigo material used for the coloration of this. And you can actually see some of the pigments still in it, right? It's pretty hard to see. You have to look really closely. But you can see a dot or a spec every now and then. And it's a, that's a feature, right? I think it's cool because, I mean, I'm very much into like the Japanese aesthetic and the Japanese history and things like that. So I've just, I've used this pen for a few days. It's really good. I just, I just wanted to give a shout out, you know, to Josh for sending me this pen. And I'm very happy with it. You're going to be seeing this pen a lot. And I will definitely do a review on this because I think it's unique. It's unique in shape and material and story. And that's the things that I like about products. That's kind of like the Uniball and not, right? Shape, material, story. Yeah. All kinds of different things. That's what gets me. Yep. So last one. I just unboxed this yesterday and I've been, this is a very, going from these first two pens to this pens is kind of like whiplash a little bit. This is the Kino Stay.Chenary 001 Serenity Fountain Pen. Is that how you should say it, Myke? Why are we doing this?

Myke Hurley: Can you stay, can you stay, can you stay, can you?

Brad Dowdy: Why are we doing it? Why am I this, why am I, why am I this way? Why am I this way, Myke? I have nothing on this one. This is just not great. Like, help me help you, dominant industry. So this is a dominant industry product. So we know dominant industry from their inks and their ink products. Um, and they've decided to make some pens to go along with this, but they've, again, like Uniball previously, Kino is their pen brand, I'm guessing. Right. Dominant industry is the ink, but that's who makes the Kino Stay.Chenary, uh, pen series. So this is the second one. I bought the second one. There's a, um, there's one that's a kind of a pink, um, themed. And this is very, uh, speaking of influencer pens, this is an influencer pen, right? It's, it's detailed to the hilt in the aesthetically visual pleasing, depending on your style way. Right. It's a very, you know, lots of little details in the cap and the finial and the clip and the cap bands. And everything is, has a little bit of extra everywhere across the product. So I've been wanting one to try just to see, is it a good product? Because these days it's at a decent price point. They're like 120 bucks. So, and they're going to be seen a lot because of their visual appeal.

Brad Dowdy: So I always feel like my job is to say, is this a good pen? Right. Regardless of whether you like the style or not, you might love it. You might hate it. But if you're interested in it, is it good? So like the jury's still out, right? I've literally had it for a day. So I can't tell you that. I can say it's been great so far. Right. I got an extra fine steel nib. The steel nib is glorious. The extra fine is like very extra fine. So it's like, that's all I need to make me happy. It is to have like a really killer extra fine nib on there. And this one does. So to be determined as I use it, but this is just one of these in this grouping of products that is kind of like at my forefront of using, testing, thinking about, learning about, and sharing with y'all. So this is, I like talking about the things that are just landing on my desk because I try not to just go jump right into a review. Like I just got this pen. And I'm not going to have a review out by next week. I want to keep using it and carrying it. Like that's what, with all these pens and products, try to use them for a little bit and see if I'm missing something. But my first thoughts are good. I haven't really seen, I've seen a lot of people talking about these. I haven't seen a lot of like particular reviews on these, even though this is the second, the second one out. So I think, yeah, pretty good. Like I, for like what they're doing, like I get it. Like it's very, like the packaging mic is like super detailed. Like it comes with like, you know, those, the classic motel key chain, like the diamond shape. Like, you know what I'm talking about. It's not a diamond, but you know what I'm talking about. Like it comes with one of those. It's got like room number zero zero one on it. Myke, you know, I should hook that key chain to my uni and not.

Myke Hurley: There you go.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That'll fit there. All right.

Myke Hurley: You just make it a collection of brands that confuse and upset you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm not upset. I was confused there.

Myke Hurley: You're not happy about the names of either of them.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, let's be honest. Stay.Shenary. That's a crime. Way worse than and not.

Myke Hurley: I think and not is fine. Kenyo Stay.Shenary.001 Serenity is not, that's just not happening for me. I'm afraid.

Brad Dowdy: So now I have to go learn why it's named this way because I clearly screwed up the and not thing. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: There's a reason. You just need to find it investigative reporting style.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know me.

Myke Hurley: Can you do that for us?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'll work on that. Thank you. I'll work on that. So, yeah. So all these pins, I'm pretty excited about like thinking about and using and eventually we'll do some reviews and we'll do a follow-up once I post these reviews. But like all three of these products I'm going to review at some point in, you know, in the coming months. So it's nice to have really interesting stuff across your desk, which is really not a problem around here. Speaking of interesting stuff, Myke. Yes.

Enigma Stationery

Myke Hurley: This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Enigma Stationery who offer unique items made from in-house designs along with top brands and hard-to-find imports. Now, I'm sure that Brad is taking himself over to enigmastationery.com right now to see what is catching his eye. Brad, what is even new in or popular over at Enigma that you're excited about right now?

Brad Dowdy: So I feel like my thumb is very much on the scale of the Pen Addict Featured Items page. Yes. It's very Business Frog related. Yes. Which, if you're not familiar, if you're just starting to listen to us now, you need to go get into the world of Business Frog. Absolutely. I'm a huge fan. Yep. Huge fan of Business Frog. But since I've talked about them so much, I want to talk about a couple of other things that they did put on their featured items. Anderillium inks, we don't talk about them enough. They have a great Luna Mothgreen ink over there amongst many other inks over at Enigma Stationery. So Anderillium does a really, really great job with their inks. And they have different kind of theme series, right? So this one's like moths and butterflies and things like that. So go check those out. They got these beautiful new Midori diaries that I haven't seen. The Midori B6. This is actually kind of going to relate to something we're going to touch on here in a minute.

Brad Dowdy: Midori makes some of the best quality products. Like just from a paper perspective. And then they lean into the aesthetic pleasing. This book would go with the Kino Stationery number 001 like perfectly. The design and the aesthetic. It's kind of like I should probably get it just for that pen. It's kind of perfect for that. And then they have a whole bunch of other diaries. People should look into like the Midori three-year diaries that they have or the five years. I've been using a five-year Hobonichi for a long time. I'm in the midst of year four of that. This is a really great product. And I see they have a bunch of different three-year and five-year. Oh, God. There's a 10-year one? Wow.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my God.

Brad Dowdy: I haven't seen the 10-year one. No. Well, I'm going to turn mine into like a nine- or 10-year diary. We'll talk about that maybe in another year when I'm finished the fifth year.

Myke Hurley: I think starting at 10 years is too much. Like for your first one or whatever. Yeah. It's too much. It's daunting.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Just honestly, I do just three years over and over again. Just do a stack of three years. Do three years, get a new three-year. Like I like to change it up from time to time. And even though I haven't changed up my five-year diary, I think I'm going to keep it going.

Myke Hurley: The three-year, I'm all about it. The 10-year, no thanks. It's too big for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And five's not bad. I've actually seen some of the fives in person. They're not bad.

Myke Hurley: I have a couple of the three years. They're beautiful. I really like the design that they do on them too. Because they have a lot of nice colors now as well, which is good.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Last thing you can get over to Enigma Stationery, which I'm going to have to order soon because I just got the Lamy All-Star, the Disco and Rollerball, you know, the very colorful ones. I got some of the ballpoint ones. But like I have to have the M17 Jetstream ballpoint refill, which is not easy to get. Enigma Stationery has those in stock. They're not cheap, but man, are they worth it. So like that's a huge, huge selling point to me. So that's going to be the next thing I order from Enigma. You get that in .5? From Enigma. They just have seven. They have .5 and .7. Do they have .5? Okay. Yeah. I have the .5 right now, so I will get .5. I need to get like one or two more of those. Probably one more. We'll see. One or two more. Like I said, they're very expensive, but man, are they worth it. They're just a fantastic, fantastic refill. So yeah, over at Enigma Stationery, where I'm going to use the discount code. Myke, you can't stop me.

Myke Hurley: You can get $10 off on orders of $50 or more just by going to enigmastationery.com slash penaddict and using the code TPA26 at checkout now. That is enigmastationery.com slash penaddict to get $10 off on orders of $50 or more with the code TPA26. Our thanks to Enigma Stationery for the support of this show and relay.

Commonplace Books

Brad Dowdy: You snuck a topic in here on me, Myke, and I think it's a great topic because it's something I literally think about all the time.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Well, I was listening to a podcast, Restless History, and they were talking about Thomas Jefferson. And in it, they referenced Jefferson's commonplace book. Okay. And just as like that, he kept commonplace books and he would write down quotes and things that he found interesting. And I remember me and you have spoken about this before. I don't remember how you came across this, but I know it was a thing we were talking about. And I was thinking, you know, I think I might quite enjoy this. It's like a kind of like a scrapbooky journal kind of vibe, right? Which is what I get from a commonplace book, the idea of it, right? That you're just, you're writing or sticking in things that you find interesting, inspiring, or just fun or whatever. So I wanted to ask you about if you're still doing this and what you're using and what goes in it.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So I do not currently have one, but we'll, so pin that and we'll get back to that. But I have recently finished one and I've done several others to what I call my everything notebook. Cause I don't like the commonplace just never sticks with me. So I call it my everything notebook. Like I, and with the, with the quote, everything goes in here, right? There's no limits to what goes in there. Right. And that's always been kind of a restrictive diary thing for me. Like diary, talk about my day, right? Is that all that's allowed to go in here? And, you know, well, what if I have to your point, what if I have this sticker that came with this order and this pen? And can I put that somewhere and then talk about that pen, you know, for a second, all these things would go into my everything notebook. So I finished it. I've done the notebooks that I've completed have been in this style to where they don't have a rule of, okay, I'm going to go write my morning pages today. And then at night I'm going to reflect. And then, you know, I'm going to have a separate place for like my gratitude and have like all these rules and restrictions. The commonplace book in my mind is your everything notebook. Everything goes in here. So I have been successful filling notebooks this way. And I currently don't have one active. And I've been thinking about that to where I'm wanting to start another one or something related to that. I haven't yet. So this is an interesting topic that you bring up because this is always like at the forefront of my mind trying to think about how I use things. So my favorite types of notebook to use for an everything notebook are generally A5 sized. Yeah. But like half thickness, like your 80 to 100 page A5s as opposed to say your Leuchtturm 198 pager. Because I like to fill notebooks. And you can trick yourself by using a smaller notebook, right? A smaller or thinner notebook. Guess what? You fill them faster if you use it. And I would rather have a stack of smaller filled notebooks as opposed to one notebook that I'm trudging through. That's, to be honest, like sometimes they've taken me like two years to fill, right? So my, I think everyone should do something like this to have a place where you're free to do anything, which is what the commonplace is. Write down the quotes. Like I copy a lot of quotes. I copy a lot of music lyrics. I get a lot of stickers, a lot of stamps. And all these things can collectively go in one fun space. And that's my everything notebook. I have the B5 Slim or the B6 Slim, the Pen Addict Midori notebook. I'm debating on starting one of those for, you know, for my next commonplace book. I generally would like a little bit wider format for this style of notebook. Just because I ended up, I ended up using lots of ephemera in there, like cut up, cut up receipts, right? Yeah. Business cards. Like if we go to a stationary fest and I'll put like business cards from that trip in these notebooks. So that notebook might be a little bit small for that. I generally prefer an A5 format, but a generally thinner notebook. So I'm in that debate zone of where I have a lot of active notebooks. Do I need one more? And right now it's been no, but I've got some thoughts. So we might actually circle back on this in a month or two and see what I've done on this. So like we can revisit this for sure. What about you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. See, I think I like the idea of it, but I don't. And I'm trying to work out like what kind of notebook I would want. And I gravitate towards something A5 style, kind of like a maybe like Leuchtermy, you know? Mm-hmm. It's like a thing that I think I would be, would work for me. Like I don't want it to be too thick. So I want it to be a pain to carry around if I want to carry it around. I want the paper to be robust enough, you know? But it feels good to write on, but Tomoe is not going to work here for me. No. You know, something like that. Because as you said, like I might want to stick things in. And it's like I need something a bit more durable. Yeah. But yeah, I need to find, maybe this can be like a thing for me to find at Stationery Fest. Okay. Find it. That actually will be good. Yeah. You can see a bunch of stuff, take a look at a bunch of stuff, and then maybe we can follow up on it after Stationery Fest, but we'll make that a challenge. Okay. Let's find me a commonplace book.

Brad Dowdy: I like that. I like that. I think I have one that I'm thinking about using one or two. I got to decide. So, last little tidbit on this. It's really difficult. Like, my benefit, the thing I see as a pro about a commonplace book can be a con for some people in that there are no rules. Yeah. Right?

Myke Hurley: But that's what I'm gravitating towards. Yeah. You know, my journal is very specific for what I want to do with it. And what I'm looking for is something that is not that, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. So, like, it's a mindset. It's a very different mindset in using this notebooks. And it works for me because I'm not restricted by, okay, here's, you know, July 9th's page. Yeah. What do I do? That intimidates me to, like, I can't, it's unusable for how I think. Right? Yep. But if I have a blank page and anything can go there, I've allowed myself to have that freedom. Yep. But it doesn't work for everyone. We all have our own things that we need, like, when we're doing this type of journaling and things like that. So, keep that in mind. Sometimes it's hard to have a notebook, a blank notebook with no rules and say, go. I'm okay with it.

Brad Dowdy: So, one last thing. I did want to drop this on you this week. Also, I wasn't prepared either. Yep. This is a homework assignment. Okay. And listeners, feel free to play along. You can send them in to us. I think it might be hard for us to read this because it's a big, big challenge. So, I noticed this article on the Well-Appointed Desk in the past couple weeks, if I could only keep 10 fountain pens. 10 fountain pens article. And that article came from, their articles came from Inky Imaginings, if I could only keep 10 fountain pens article, at the end of June. And you and I recently got some feedback, listener question, saying that you only need three pens. And I argued, my argument was, well, I think I could do it with two.

Fountain Pen Selection

Brad Dowdy: I think picking 10 pens is harder than picking two pens.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, probably.

Brad Dowdy: So, I wanted to give us time. I want to do this experiment.

Brad Dowdy: This is fountain pens, though, right? This is fountain pens only. So, I'm not counting standard pens. Okay, let's do fountain pens only. If I could only keep 10 fountain pens is the impetus of the article. Okay. What would they be? So, next week, that's our homework assignment. Okay. To name 10 pens. Unranked, yeah. Unranked is fine. I don't have, need a one through 10.

Myke Hurley: Okay. No, I like it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's, I honestly, I think I could do two pens easier than 10. Two pens, I'd just pick, like, two great pens and just be done. Like, I already know what they are.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's like, to me, I'm already, I have, like, five in my head. But then five to 10 feels hard.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, 10 is a legit problem.

Brad Dowdy: To where you're drawing the line. And then, 10 pens allows you to cover bases. But then there has to be a line drawn. And I'm interested to see where that is on this. So, like, I can, like you who are saying, I could probably come up with the first three to five pretty quickly. And then it's going to be a battle. So, I think this will be a fun. If y'all want to play along, like I said, I don't know that we could read all of these. If you do happen to play along and send this in, it would take a long time to read, like, full lists of 10 and thoughts behind them. But I would still love to read them. You know, maybe I could share them on the blog or something like that. But, so, anyway, Myke, how can they get in touch with us?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so, you've got two ways, really. If you want to do it with no commentary, go to penaddictfeedback.com because we have a limit on the amount of characters. That's true, true. So, but that's for a good reason. If you want to do a lot of commentary, you can write to hello at penaddict.com via email. That's where you can put your rationale. If you want to find Brad online, he's over at penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, and you can find him streaming three times a week at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You find me here on Relay, at theenthusiast.net, and at cortexbrand.com as well. I want to thank Enigma Stationery and Squarespace for the support of this episode. They're continued support, in fact. And I want to thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.