Editing The Pen Addict 161/transcript (section)

== Noodler's Apache Sunset ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, one other thing to throw out there. Depending on the bottle you get, Noodler's Apache Sunset can look like Apricot.

'''Joe Crace:''' Yeah, I love Apache Sunset. That's a really, really great ink. It's a little, if you just picture the terms, it's definitely more fallish flavor. It's got that hint of brown more than the Apricot does. But it shades similarly to the Apricot, and you get those yellows and golds in there, too. It's just a slight, slightly more on the darker side, but it's really, really good. I prefer that over, like, Fuyugaki, too. So I'll have to try the Yuyaki when I get home. It's sitting on my desk, so I want to try that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't like the name Apache Sunset because it makes me think of Napalm.

'''Joe Crace:''' Hmm. Well, you can get Noodler's Napalm, too. I mean, Dragon's Napalm. Dragon's Napalm. That's, like, intense orange. It's reddish orange, I think. So, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. I mean, if nothing else, Nathan Tardif can come up with interesting names for his inks. Yeah, like Hall of Darkness, for example. Yeah, he doesn't hesitate to be controversial or throw shade at anyone. When he's coming up with an ink name, which I, you know, I guess I got to give it to him. He seems like an interesting dude. All right. So this is a big topic, and we'll wrap up the show on this. But it's kind of got a lot I want to cover here and a lot to ask both Joe and Myke on. So Joe recently did a post on the Gentleman Stationers about two weeks ago, I guess. It's called Searching and Fearless Inventory. And this is something you see talked about in the pen community a lot to where a lot of us, I say we, the collective we, not just we sitting here. We, as fountain pen users, stationary users, get into this habit, and I thought you put it well, is, you know, we're buying stuff just because we can buy it. And we're not necessarily buying it because we have a specific use case for it. You know, we're buying because we should buy it, right? We feel we're in this community. Someone's released something new, a new ink, a new pencil, a new notebook. We should buy it, or we feel like we should buy it, but should we really? I mean, that's kind of the dilemma a lot of us have a lot of the times.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I think there's a FOMO aspect of it, too, just a fear of missing out on the next big thing. Sure. The next big thing that everybody's crazy about, that everyone's talking about, and that you're not going to get in on it. Yeah, you don't want to miss out. If you don't buy it now, it's going to sell out, or they're going to quit making it. By the time you ever get around to it, you're never going to see it again.

'''Joe Crace:''' Raising my hand, guilty as charged here. You guys did it to me, like, 35 minutes ago.

'''Joe Crace:''' Now that's just passing the blame, Michael.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, because I didn't, like, it was in the idea, like, I've been trying to calm down some of my purchases recently. So I'm able to let things go a little bit easier when I see them go by, and then you guys just won't stop talking about the Retro 51s, and then I have to go and buy it.

'''Joe Crace:''' You know, we have a podcast about pins, right? Say what now? So, Joe, what brought this about, and how are you making changes in what your habits are?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I think what brought it about was that I was sitting at my desk working from home one Friday trying to get something done, and I just found myself getting completely distracted by these piles of pens and paper and bottles of ink and all this other stuff sitting on my desk. I mean, I think I might have had, like, nine or ten inked fountain pens sitting on a tray in front of me, and, you know, I'm trying to write something and put a brief together or a paper together that I had to get out that afternoon, and I, you know, maybe I shouldn't be using this pen. I haven't used this one in about a week. Oh, look at all, what am I going to do about all these pencils I have in this cup? I mean, I bought these three months ago, and I haven't even gone through two of them. It just got very distracting, and, you know, on top of that, you had the stuff that I had purchased but have never gotten around to using that I might have reviewed but ultimately decided it wasn't for me. And as you accumulate more and more of this stuff, it has a weight to it that you're carting it around. You've got to move it out of the way, but there's also a psychological aspect to it where, you know, you've got all this unused stuff sitting around, almost like a full email inbox or a backlog of unread books. At some point, you've almost just kind of got to declare bankruptcy and move forward.

'''Joe Crace:''' I thought it was interesting in your post how you kind of, as you were inventorying everything, you were, like, going around the house, and you were, like, taking pictures, and there's, like, you know, you have, like, your desk stuff and stuff here. Then there's stuff on shelves, and then you're, like, finding cabinets where there's, like, ink jammed in the back corner. It gets out of hand really easily if you're not careful or have some kind of, you know, stricter focus on what you're going to actually use as opposed to what you are going to buy. And I, it's hard. I mean, which sounds silly. It's like, just don't buy it, Brad. You know, just stop buying that stuff. And, you know, you do get wrapped up in that missing out thing. And I have tried, I thought it was, it's kind of been telling to me in my personal carrying stuff, stuff that I use the most, how I've, like, actually stripped out a bunch of stuff out of my backpack that I haven't been using. Like, I would max out my backpack because I could, right? And that doesn't mean I should be carrying all that stuff. I'm sure as hell not going to use all that stuff. So I've got it really narrowed down, and I thought my post today was kind of, like, a culmination of that. But if it's short-lived, it kind of defeats the whole purpose. So, like, how are you going to manage this, you know, going forward? Are you doing something, like, specifically to say, okay, my next purchase has to meet X criteria?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think for now what I'm doing, for a while I've been doing the one-in-one-out on pen purchases. But if I'm going to add a new pen to my collection, I'm going to get rid of something that I haven't been using. And I've been pretty good about that over the past six months to a year. In terms of ink, that's where I'm really going crazy because I like to, you know, I like to change my ink colors. I guess I'm probably more of an ink collector as opposed to a pen collector at this point. And I don't have a crazy amount of ink, you know, crazy being a relative standard in our group of people. I don't have hundreds of bottles like some people out there. Thomas Hall. But I think I'm just going to be more intentional about what I buy, that I have to really, really like it. It has to be something that truly is a limited edition and it has to speak to me. Right. I'm not buying it simply because it's a limited edition that's going to be scarce and I'm going to want to be able to say that I have a bottle of it.