Editing The Pen Addict 413/transcript (section)

== Celebrating Blog Anniversary ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's actually what I want to know first. Like when you realize not just, oh, anniversary coming up, but, oh, this blog has been in existence for 10 years. Like what was, what were you thinking like to yourself?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, okay. So last year when you were announcing like 10 years of penaddict and everything, I was like, wow, my tenure is coming up next year. And then this year rolled around and the world's biggest dumpster fire happened. I lost my job. The pandemic happened. Like, you know, I mean, just everything. And I was like, okay, what do I do? Do I make a big deal about this? Or do I just like quietly stick it under the rug and have a big 11th anniversary celebration next year? And I kind of went back and forth and trying to decide. And I'm like, you know, things like leading up the last, you know, two weeks or whatever, things like, you know, businesses were starting to open back up and things, you know, I thought, okay, well, maybe it'd be okay.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And so I started contacting some of my regular sponsors and kind of ask them how they felt about it. And they said, no, no, no, it'd be a really great idea. You know, people need something that would bring them a little joy, you know, and we are totally, we totally support it. We would love to help. And so I thought, okay, well, let's do this. And so I started putting everything together to do the celebration. And then all of the stuff happened that we talked about at the beginning of the show. And I was like, do I keep doing this? Or do I just like, I don't know, like pull the plug. And I decided to just keep going. Because at this point, I feel like, again, people need some light in their life. I want to celebrate the hard work that not only I've done, but also the people who have continued to support the blog, which are the vendors, the people. The manufacturers, everyone who reads the blog, who continue to come back looking for something to keep them entertained, distracted, and as well as everyone who writes for the blog. You know, this is something that gives them, you know, they're as much a part of this and contributor as well. And I need the outlet more now than ever before. So it's been, you know, as much, and I know for sure you can probably relate because you've kind of been on the same roller coaster of being fully employed and then jumping ship. You chose to jump ship. I was sort of forced off my ship. But still, doing this full time is a different, it makes it a very different job. You know, now it's a job, not a hobby. But still, I mean, I didn't think I'd be, you know, when I started this 10 years ago, I didn't know how long it would go. Maybe a year, two years, kind of fun. Who knows?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So is there an origin story to the blog? Like what made you decide to say, you know, I'm going to get this domain and I'm going to write about stationery?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, this is a story I've probably told several times. And I may have told this story, the podcast before. But I went to a presentation about a woman, that a woman did who had started a decorating a blog, decorating her apartment all in turquoise. And the site was the house of turquoise. And she basically said that at that particular time, if she could make a website all about turquoise, that the internet was big enough to have a website about any super specific interest. She's like, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And I had always been fascinated with stationery and office supplies and pens and paper and all of that. And I wanted to focus on that. It brought me joy. I knew other people that loved doing it. I was already friends with you at that point and Johnny from Pencil Revolution. And I had seen what you guys were doing. And I wanted to do it too. So I literally went back to my desk. And I started the Well-Appointed Desk. And at the time, I launched it on Tumblr and just started posting things that I liked. So it was really at that point in time, just sort of reposting like pictures of offices, cool office supplies that I found. And so it really started off just kind of a real quick repost dump for a couple of months before I kind of started writing more solid reviews and things. But I just was like, hey, if she can do it, I can do it. Like, let's just, I'm just going to do it. So after a couple of years, I moved it over to, you know, as I started writing more and more reviews and Tumblr really didn't service like comments and giveaways and things like that, I moved it over to WordPress where I could have more control over, you know, everything the way that you kind of need to as you develop things.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And it kind of went on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is the site still on WordPress now?

'''Ana Reinert:''' It is. It's still. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've done a great job with it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Thank you. I've switched templates many, many times and added plugins and things like that. And I've debated moving it, you know, to another hosting service. But at this point, there's over 4,000 posts and I just can't bring myself to move it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I haven't gone through it. And I did the math years and years and years ago. And I was like, woof, that was a lot. I'd be hesitant to do it now. And like, you know, it'd be scary to. We're definitely like locked into our platforms, you know, for, you know, our sanity right now. If nothing else, Myke, Myke Hurley has a question that I'd feel weird asking this question. So I'm going to make Myke ask.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah. Well, I did write in our document too. So in the post, you mentioned that when you started the Well Appointed Desk, you and Brad were already friends. And that was surprising to me. And I wondered how that had happened. Because I just always assumed that like you were both already doing the stuff and then found each other that way because you were in the kind of pen blogging community. Like that's how I've made friends with lots of people in the podcasting community is I find out about them or we find about each other because we're in that already. So I was just keen on understanding like how that happened.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And correct me if I'm wrong, Brad, but I had had a personal blog where I had done several like pen paper related reviews before I had started the Well Appointed Desk. And at that point, Lily from JetPens, who's one of the founders of JetPens, had actually contacted me and asked if she could send me samples. And I think you had actually commented on my personal site. And so you and I had started communicating there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's exactly how I remember it. Anna had a blog called Snow Angels. That was right, right? Wasn't that the name? Yeah. Snow Angels actually still have some like little icon of yours, some black and white icon of yours floating around somewhere in some of my contacts. We've known each other so long. We've gone through so many like little avatar changes. But, you know, sometimes you can't get rid of the old ones in some places. I think I have one back from like the Snow Angels day somewhere on there. But, yeah, that's when I was I had started the pen addict and I was searching the Internet, right, for more people who were into the same kind of things. And, you know, that's where like, you know, in the heyday of blogging and I still try to do it now is like cross posting and cross promoting and linking to other other similar content. And so I would always share Snow Angels posts. And that's how I got to talking to Anna in the beginning. And then we just hit it off from there. And it's like still like one of my one of my best friendships to this day. It's it's pretty wild. How these things started that we've started these so long ago and seeing where we're at today. It's like kind of hard to wrap your head around a little bit for me. I don't know about you.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, totally. Because I remember way back then I was doing some like craft show stuff with my friend Annie. And so the two of us were like screen printing like tea towels and things like that. And Lily from JetPens had offered to do a trade with me for some of the tea towels in exchange for JetPens product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that was back in the day when JetPens was still basically they were probably just out of their apartment at that time. Right. And like like 50 percent of the SKUs were pilot high tech C's, you know, and things like that.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. Yeah. Dell pens and pencils or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So back in back in the heyday. Gosh, I really if I think about that too much, it's like mind blowing. Like where some of these companies are at now that we started with back in the day. I want to talk real quick about how just your processes have changed from back in the day. For example, I would like I look back at my original post and it's just this very simple like short, quick, terrible photography, you know, weird grammar kind of. Let me tell you about this pen thing. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And then now I feel like I write more, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Personal specific stories. So have you seen a change in how you approach, say, just like a product review? Because you write a lot of other things besides product reviews. But have you noticed a change in your approach over over all these years?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, for starters, like there's a real consistency when we when we do reviews. I mean, we have macros for like specifics that we add to each of our reviews to make sure that there's like consistency across the board in terms of at the end of each review, we'll include a list of the materials that were used so that people know for sure. Like what paper was used, like what paper was used, what ink, you know, those sorts of details that wasn't necessarily included in earlier reviews. Like, you know, in some cases, like it was never the same paper for pen reviews or it was like I used to use them. Was it McElriss notebook? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. But I used because it was like a giant. Absolutely. Like early on, I had this ginormous McElriss notebook that I used.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because you could get them at Barnes and Noble.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, exactly. And it was not a good notebook to use. And so now it's like I always, you know, to this day, I use the same Rodia because I feel like it's something that everyone has access to. So it's something that should they want to replicate the results would be something that was available to them. And because I've used it so frequently, then they can go back and look at earlier reviews and compare and contrast one pen or ink to another. And then, of course, now every ink is tested on coloring paper so that, you know, when we compare and contrast the colors from different brands, you know, it's like it's like there's so much more consistency and we try to keep everything. And I have studio lighting so that I have control of my lighting situation. So everything is photographed in very similar circumstances each time. So, yeah, I feel like, you know, it's like I go back now and I look at like older ones and it's just like I know that I was trying to take pictures outside. And I remember one day like trying to shoot outdoors to try to get the best lighting. And like the wind was blowing and things were blowing across the yard. And I finally hit a point where I was just like, that's it. I'm buying lights. I don't care how much they cost. I'm just doing it. I was so furious because it was like chasing things across the yard and the neighbors were looking at me like I was crazy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. That's hilarious because I would totally delay a post because I couldn't get good lighting outdoors because that's where I always took my product photography. And I was like, I can't take this picture today because it's raining and it's due tomorrow. And what am I going to do? And I just have to cancel the post.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's so funny. Photography is important in this type of work, though. Like especially when you are starting out because you have to have the visual element to draw people in so they can understand your voice and trust your opinion. Like it gets to a certain point where for both of you, your readers, they just want to know what you have to say more because you can get pictures of a pen on the company's website. Right. But they want your point of view. But you have to establish yourself first. And I think that the visual component is an important part of that establishment. So people will actually come and read what you have to say and see that you have something interesting to say.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's one of the things Anna does best. Right. I mean, Anna, you pretty much stage like all your photos. You have like a whole staging set up pretty much. Right.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I do. But it's it's pretty simple. Like I don't do a ton of set dressing. Occasionally, I'll do a little bit for like sort of a glory shot. But I do tend to keep it fairly simple. And I noticed that I use the same like tabletop. Oh, just like I found I found one from like six years ago and I'm like, that's the same the same table surface. I'm like, I need to get some new table surface.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All you have to do is look at two of my posts to go. Oh, yeah, they're all the same.

'''Ana Reinert:''' In terms of like the writing style, like I also feel like I'm I've become a better writer. Like after 4000 posts. Yeah. And it's a very uncomfortable place as someone who's been a creative, like visually creative my whole life to ever describe myself as a writer. Because I feel like I've I've stepped my toe over a line somewhere like you can't call yourself a writer. You'd not go to school for that. But I feel like at a certain point, it's like. As a technical writer, like I can describe the details of pens and ink and I feel like. Maybe that's a safe territory to go into. And I hope that in many instances, I'm at least entertaining when I write a lot of my reviews. Like I try to make some of, you know, like there are cases where I've I've pushed the boundaries. With my reviews in terms of being a little tongue in cheek with them. There was a color verse ink review where I was particularly cheeky.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I enjoy those types of posts and getting to see like your personality come out in there. And I think it's important, like I definitely transitioned from a more technical writing review style, like here's the specs and all this type of stuff into trying as hard as it is to explain what it feels like to use this product. Right. Which is is hard to put in words, but I feel more comfortable these days doing that. So, yeah, I want to throw you under the bus here for a second because people enjoy taking me to task for a statement I said early on about I hate fountain pens and look at me now. I vividly remember a point in our friendship where you said you would never go over. You would never spend more than one hundred dollars on a pen. And you like had a hard stop and like you would even put this into reviews. Like, am I remembering this correctly?

'''Ana Reinert:''' I suspect I probably did say that at some point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like in the early days.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that that's long gone at this point. Right. And there's, you know.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I pretty I jumped that shark a long time ago.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just like my I hate fountain pens idea. Like that's that's a long time ago. In Internet years, it's like infinity years ago when we said these things. So that's not only has our blogging style changed, our tastes and appreciation for different types of product has changed, too.