Editing The Pen Addict 584/transcript (section)

== Desk Setup and Organization ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' You owed me a video. Because I made a video where I did my desk, I did a desk tour. And you had a lot of smack to talk on this show about my desk. And so I laid down the gauntlet on you and said, all right, Mr. Fancy Pants, make a desk tour. And you have. And I have some things I would like to say and some questions I would like to ask about your desk. There'll be a link in the show notes for anyone that hasn't seen this video, which is very fun. I would, I have one, I think, important question to begin to help me frame the rest of this. Is this desk your main desk? Yes. So is this where you are right now? Yes. Huh. Because I always thought you had a different desk.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I have a desk in our bedroom. Yeah. But I rarely use it. Like, I will use the desk in the bedroom if I want to, like, focus on writing and just writing. And I'll just throw my laptop in there. Okay. I have a monitor in there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I know you've sent me pictures of that one before. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So that's, like, where my, like, better keyboard and my good mouse lives. Because that's where if I just want to get away from everything and hide and, like, if I need to, like, write a bunch of articles or just, like, type out a bunch of words. Like, that's where I'll sit and turn up the music and go. But I never, I won't say never, I rarely, like, use any, like, stationery there. That is, like, I'm going to go focus on this project I need to bang out. And that's what I'll do. So otherwise, that's, it's probably, like, a 90%, 10% split. So I'm 90% sitting what you saw in the desk on the video and where I'm sitting at right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. That has helped contextualize things. I don't know why I always thought that in my mind, like, where I imagine you, I imagine you at that desk when we're recording, not at the streaming desk. So I was very surprised to see the microphone there. I'm like, well, what's that doing there?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very confusing for me. So, no, this is also a room that's carpeted and that other room is not carpeted. So that's, like, an instant no-go just from an audio perspective. So, yeah, I've always been in here. I've never, I've never recorded a show from that other room once. All right. My first comment. Now that you say, now that you say that, before you get in this, I'm totally going to distract us. I used to record in our guest bedroom on a, on the, on the Yeti microphone. And I would have the laptop stationed on the nightstand and me sitting in a chair that was squirreled between the bed and the wall. I'm just picturing that now. I don't know if I've ever, that is so long ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We've just done some, we've been doing this for so long. We've just done some really stupid stuff over that time. Yeah. You know? Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that was when I used to record over a hotspot too, which was a nightmare in itself. Oh, yeah. Somehow we made it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Lots of problems in the history of this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, I don't know why that memory just came back to me, but wow. Okay. Let's go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Piles on piles on piles. That is my main takeaway from not just your desk, but your overall office area. There is just, everything is on top of each other and there's lots of them. Like lots of piles.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's a vertical storage issue that I find myself in. Yeah. Right. So, my desk, so the stream desk and where I'm literally sitting at right now is five feet long. So, you know, the width rise, width rise. And so, between like computers and keyboards and monitors and risers and speakers, it's actually not that big by the time I get all my stuff on there. So, I try to keep the center desk space for right now my laptop, but normally for other writing, you know, pens, stationery, notebooks, all that kind of stuff. And then I'm basically encircled by stuff. A lot of it vertically because I'm always trying new things, testing new things. How does this pen work on this paper? Oh, what about this paper? Where's that ink? You know, where is this pen? How does this pen compare to that pen? And it's just like those questions don't end, right? That is an endless, unanswerable question. So, a lot of times if I'm sitting here and then I'll just set something aside, like I'll literally just like picture my writing right in front of me. And then if I'm done with it, it just gets pushed to the side. Well, then that side just starts building up like and it gets vertical. So, I will go ahead and cut to the chase now. I purposefully did not clean my desk for that because honestly it's in there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That was the agreement. Yeah. That wasn't like I said to you, you cannot go in now and like put your thumb on the scales for this. Correct.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I will admit that it's like that a lot of the time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But after the video, I did correct a lot of the issues. Like some of the self-inflicted stuff that I have going on. But you were faced to look at yourself, you know? Yeah. I realized one of my core problems, which maybe we'll get to later. It's probably just a good time to talk about it. Now, one of the core issues with the verticalness is paper, right? Like notebooks that I don't use. But like I'm going to test it once and then set it aside. Or like I have like a pile of like scrap paper. That is just literally things I just pick up and write on. I got rid of every notebook and loose type of paper that is not in like my regular daily usage. So, which boils down to three notebooks. It's my regular like everything notebook. That's like a journal. That's the way I'm writing like notes for today's show in. My Hobonichi five year. And then my plotter. So, those are the core. Those things I literally use every day. Every shred of paper is now off my desk. All the random stuff. So, that was the big. That was the big cleanup point.