Editing The Pen Addict 614/transcript (section)

== Stationery Usage ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So I've got a first question from an anonymous question asker. All right, I haven't seen these. I've been in the pen hobby since high school, and I've recently graduated college. I'm not looking for work, as I'm currently working as my mom's paid caretaker, and that takes precedence. But now that I'm out of school, I find myself at a loss of what to do with my stationery most days. With my open schedule, I now only use all my planner stuff while doing my monthly spread. I write fiction for fun, but my ADHD struggles to me to go to my desk and pick up a pen over a phone and swipe to type. Any suggestions for what I should be doing to be using my products more?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's like, are you me, anonymous? Because I feel like this a lot. As someone with a lot of stationery, with so many pens and papers and inks and pencils and everything literally sitting in front of me right now, sometimes I go, huh, how am I going to use this stuff today? You know, yes, I have my planner, and yes, I have my five-year journal. And those are small content type of usages. So a couple of things that I have done to continue to use my stationery. So you mentioned that you write fiction. Like, that's great, you know, but when you're not, you know, sometimes, you know, you need a break from that or you need a creative break from that and need to think differently. If you go back to our shout-out of the week this week, the doodles are one of the things that I do. For my line art, I will literally just grab a set of postcards, right? And, like, a notebook's too intimidating or, like, a journal is too intimidating. Like, the big bulk, bulk, bulk, bulk bag is too much, too much for me mentally sometimes. So you want to, the way I break out of these habits is I take smaller format papers. Like, in the past, it might be an index card or a note card, right? And now it's currently a postcard. Or I will take that postcard and literally just draw lines all over it. And I'll zone out. It'll take me, you know, 10, 15 minutes to do this little zone out thing. And I was like, you know what? I just got to use my pen. I got to use a couple different pens. I got to see how this nib worked on probably terrible paper and how this ink behaved. Like, I'm not trying to be perfect. You know, I now have, like, this little bit of information that I didn't have before. Oh, how did this rollerball work on this horrible quality postcard? Or, oh, did this fountain pen work amazing on this postcard? So now I have this one little bit. And then when I'm not doing that, sometimes I'll write lyrics on these postcards as well. Like, if a song is stuck in my head or I've listened to a new album today, I'll go grab the lyrics from that song on the album and maybe not even write the whole thing. But, like, whatever fits on a postcard just kind of randomly. Another thing I've done, which you can do for any type of media, book, movie, music, video games, anything like that, is write your own personal mini review of that as you do it. I do that on note cards for albums. I haven't done that recently. I started this year doing, like, one a week. And I would take a little, like, A7 size note card. I would get an album on one side. I would write the track list of the album. And then on the flip the card over. And I would write my thoughts on, did I like it? What did I like? What did I not like? What was my favorite song? What was terrible? Things like that. So what I, my biggest piece of advice is to use your stationery in small chunks when you're struggling. Right? Don't get out the 300 page A5 journal and your whole binder full of pens. Right? Simplify it to the most basic. Grab a gel ink pen and a post-it note. And just doodle and write. And then you just start getting these habits that kind of break into other habits. And then guess what? All of a sudden you want to use, go do a bunch of ink testing in your A5 journal with every pen you have inked up. And try to, you know, say, hey, these are all the pens I have inked up right now. What am I enjoying? And that, those little things lead into the bigger things. And again, this is the whole goal is like, hey, do this little thing instead of picking up the phone. Right? To scroll endlessly. And like, that's a challenge we all have these days. So, I'm adamant about small stationery and small doses and just doing it and not caring so much about things. And then that just naturally leads into the bigger things when your mind is free to allow you to do them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' My recommendation is gratitude journaling because it's a simple form of journaling. And you're just writing very simple things. And it's not, you know, you could write a couple of sentences, a couple of lines, maybe even a couple of words. But if you write, say, three different things down each day, you could use three different pens to do it. So, I think a simple journal practice like that can be very beneficial, but it can also give you a great excuse to use your pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, like, what I would do is say, you know, I am grateful for the shacket that Myke wore to the Apple event yesterday. It was beautiful.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's one of my favorite new pieces of clothing. It's gorgeous. I love it. It's a good shacket.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's a good shacket. So, yeah, very good.