Editing The Pen Addict 88/transcript (section)

== New Year ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, Happy New Year to you. It was weird because we recorded right before the New Year rang in last year. So it's been like a week before we get into this New Year stuff. It feels like the New Year's already come and gone, even though we're only a few days into it. So Happy New Year to you too, sir.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And Happy New Year to all of our listeners as well. Of course. Of course. Of course. Let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor for this week, and that is, of course, the fine folks over at Squarespace. They are the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho1. Squarespace is constantly updating their platform with new features, designs, and more support. They're beautiful templates for you to start with and tons of other style options for you to adjust, so you can really create, craft, and make your own space online. Squarespace takes care of hosting, SEO, and even makes your site look fantastic on any device featuring responsive web design. It's really easy to use, but they have over 70 employees dedicated to customer support and their customer care team if you need any help at all. Squarespace truly cares about design, and this shows throughout their entire product. It's on their website, so if you go to squarespace.com, you're going to see a fantastic-looking site with beautiful videos, and it looks really great throughout. Their templates, which are award-winning, so you're going to have an award-winning layout on your site from one of the templates that you choose and adapt. But it also shows in their iOS apps, which I've spoken about in weeks past, like Squarespace Blog and Squarespace Metric, which allow you to post to your blog and to see all of your stats and stuff that come onto your site using those. They also really care about the way that their backend system looks, so when you're posting to your site, it looks fantastic there too. I want to take a quick moment to just note something, and Squarespace haven't asked me to do this, but I wanted to just take a quick second to congratulate them, because Brad, believe it or not, yesterday marked 10 years for Squarespace.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I saw that. I saw that they did a blog post on that. I was shocked. I had no idea.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Indeed. If you go to blog.squarespace.com, you're going to see it right up there at the moment. They've also redesigned their blog, which is one of the first announcements that they're going to have. They're going to have 10 announcements throughout all of January, which I'm really excited to see what they're going to be. I'm looking forward to some cool stuff coming from them. But it just shows they've been around for 10 years. These guys really know what they're doing. They've got it down. They've got all the hosting down. Squarespace sites look fantastic. They just react fantastically. They scale brilliantly. I've been using them for about five or six years myself personally. And even back then, they were incredible as they were up to today. So congratulations to Squarespace for making 10 years. And I think you should go and try them out to see what all the fuss is about. Go to squarespace.com. You can sign up for a free trial. There's no credit card needed to do this. You just give them your name, your email address. You can sign up for an account. And then if you decide to purchase a Squarespace plan, they start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. And make sure that you get 10% off and support this show by using the code TALLYHO1. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O and the number one. So thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting 5x5 and The Pen Addict. You're losing my voice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You are. You are. I was wondering if you're catching the plague that I had these past few weeks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A little bit.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A little bit. Hey, one thing I forgot to mention when I was talking about these new pens that I got, the Rotring I've got from Keegan at One Star Leather. He sent me a package. He sent me my wife's coming in from the mailbox yesterday. And I see her looking down at this white envelope. And she's just got this quizzical look on her face. And I'm just like staring at her. I don't know what she's doing. And she's just looking and kind of looking cross-eyed at it. And she hands me the package. And the label of the package in the ship to address, it says, Brad, the enabler, Dowdy, Prince of Pens, Knight of Notco, the man of Macon, on my shipping label. What a dude. So he brought his A-game on that one. So that was awesome. So thank you, Keegan, for doing that. And thank you for confusing the heck out of my wife and me having to explain to her what's going on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this is a thing that I do every week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Those are always uncomfortable conversations with people who don't. I mean, she obviously knows pretty much everything I've got going on with pens and paper and everything. But when there's like these little inside jokes and things and you have to explain them to a person like in real words and not in reality life, not on internet life, it kind of falls flat sometimes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. It does.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So let's get into this. Last year we did our 2013 stationary resolutions. And it kind of stuck as a good episode. People like to hear about that and hear what we were planning on for in the pen and paper world in the new year. And we followed up on it halfway, three quarters through the year last year to see how we did. And so we wanted to do that again this year with our 2014 stationary resolutions and wish list. And it's good to talk about these publicly so people can hold you accountable, Myke. Are you nervous about that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's sad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. It's always. But that's why you do it. So I don't normally do resolutions just, you know, New Year's resolutions. But I do like having these pen and paper resolutions that I try to stick to throughout the year. So one of my biggest one this year is to really work with the Hobonichi planner that I have and really make that kind of my go-to capturing device and, you know, really just use the planner as a planner. You know, live in the Hobonichi planner. I've never been a planner person to where I've been able to stick with the planner for its intended use for a full year. So it's actually kind of a scary thing for me. I was very hesitant to even order the Hobonichi planner. But I enjoy writing in it so much that, you know, I'm carrying it with me everywhere I go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'm trying to really focus on using it. And I'm not focusing on how I'm using it. You know, I'm focusing on just using it. Writing things down to remember, you know, writing to-do lists, writing plans, you know. I'm trying to do – I'm trying to add in, like, some little sketches and things. I'm trying to – one of the things, other things just in general I want to do this year is try to explore my creative side a little bit more. I always – that's kind of a repressed gene in me, if you will. Like, I don't explore, like, my artistic side very much even though I know I've got it in me because I'm too nervous and I have that hesitancy. So I'm going to try to break through on that this year. We'll see. I'm going to use the Hobonichi for that because there's room in the planner just for, you know, sketches and doodles and drawings and things like that. And try to, you know, free me up a little bit mentally. So that's going to be my biggest thing I'm going to work on this year is to use that planner throughout the entire year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, I don't know, stick with it because I've never been a planner person. And so that's – it's actually going to be pretty hard for me. I mean, I forget sometimes, like, I've already forgotten, like, on the weekends when I'm not necessarily carrying around with me as I would, like, all through the week through work and things like that. I forget to, like, you know, jot things down that I wanted to remember or need to do and things like that. So I'm working on that and that's going to be – so y'all hold me to that and hopefully towards the end of the year we'll follow back up on this and see how I did. And hopefully I've done well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a noble goal, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's a hard one because it's not my style. No. Not my style at all. I'm usually just, you know, just a blank field notes list and jotting things down, scribbles and things like that. So, yeah, using that's going to be a goal of mine. And, you know, I've got this fancy cover that Mr. Bruckwicky made for me. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. And so, yeah, we're going to do it to it. But so one of the other things I want to do this year is to use more vintage pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' My tendencies lean to the modern, obviously. Like I've just bought these new very nice pens. Even, you know, I wouldn't consider the Rotring, you know, a vintage pen at all. I consider it kind of a classic modern design. But like last year at the pen show, I bought that Vacumatic, right? And it's still one of my favorite looking pens. But I never use it. And this goes back to what you were talking about in the beginning of the show with your Twisby. It's like, you know, I buy these pens to use, not to sit here and look pretty, you know, on a desk. You know, what good is that? And I've got to force myself to use them more often. I don't know why I'm mollycoddling these pens. Because there's no need for that. I mean, it's a mental block, I think, for me. And I don't want to necessarily add much to my vintage collection. You know, like I might buy one or two more pens. But I want to use the vintage pens that I have. Like I have some really nice pens sitting here. I have a Parker 51. And I have an Estabrook. And I have a Vacumatic. And they just sit here in my pen case. And I never ink them up. And I don't know why. So I want to get into using those more. Because those pens deserve to be used. And they're just great writers. They're great looking. And I don't know what my hesitancy is to ink those up. And use them over some of the more current pens that I own.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And my last resolution is I want to write more and write better. Or I guess I should say I want to write more better. And I guess with that, I mean, I've had, you know, since we've been, since I've started the NotCo company, I think I've, and I knew it was coming. And that's why I've kind of planned around it. And I haven't been writing quite as much as I like to for the pen addict. And I want to get back to doing, you know, some longer, some longer reviews, some longer articles, some more general writing. I've never thought my writing quality was very good. So I want to improve on my blogging and my writing style and my writing quantity and quality. So that's going to be a challenge. I don't know that I necessarily have some quantifiable measure for that. But I feel creatively challenged, I guess. I guess I want to be a little bit more creative this year and do some different things. And what those things are, I'm not sure. But, you know, writing and drawing and doing, you know, firing off those creative brain cells in my head. And those are the things I want to work on this year. So that's kind of my list. You know, I think it's definitely doable type stuff. And, you know, things that kind of get lost in the shuffle, like my vintage pens. You know, they're sitting there. I need to use them because I love looking at them. So might as well put them in the rotation, Myke. It's the way to go, man. Yeah, yeah. So what are your plans for the year?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I've got a few. Like you. I want to help people, more people in my life find the right pen. I was showing off my pen collection to the lady over the weekend. And it was, she was very interested by them all. And was like sort of enjoying using each of them. And sort of coming from an art background and stuff. It was something that she was very, very intrigued with. So, you know, she was testing them all out and was showing very sort of similar thoughts and feelings to me about how they feel and stuff like that. And of everything. She really liked the Twisby stub nib. Mm-hmm. And the, she actually liked the Parker Vacumatic quite a lot. Just the way that they were, yeah, smooth they were. Mm-hmm. So, and she's always been, you know, she's always been the sort of person that is like, I want to have one pen. So, she used to have this one pen that she loved. But she lost it. And then since then, it's just been a kind of whatever, you know. Yeah. It's fancy. And she uses, I think it was like some pilot, like, art pens. So, you know, I'm going to show her the Sakura Pigma Micron and the, what's the other one I'm thinking of?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, there's a bunch. Yeah. Uni pen, pilot drawing pen. Yeah. So, stuff like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Copic. You think about the Copic? I figured a Copic multiliner, yeah. Yeah. I'll put those in the show notes. So, yeah. So, just trying to help people in my life find the pens that are right for them. Mm-hmm. As opposed to necessarily just being, this is the one that I think you should have. Gotcha. And that stuff. I think that might be an interesting task this year to see how I get along with that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's a very noble, noble goal. I like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It could be interesting. It could be interesting for sure. I just want to try that out. So, I want to go to the pen show again in October, but with more money this time. That's a bigger budget. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I can start saving now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, exactly. I want to be able to allow for some surprise purchases and also have a couple of things that I definitely want to get. I want to buy a couple more Retro 51s. I don't really feel like I've done that too much in 2013 and maybe my collection is waning a little bit because of it. And I want to back a minimum of five really cool pen and paper related Kickstarters this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like that. I like that. There's some interesting things out on Kickstarter. It kind of, about six or eight months ago, I thought there was kind of a lull in the cool pen and paper Kickstarter stuff. And then, you know, probably back around the summertime, it seemed like it kind of started ramping up again. And I ended up back in several things. And yeah, I think that's really cool. Is anything on your radar recently on there? I don't know that I've noticed anything. I know the ink, obviously, here recently. But yeah, I need to check and see if there's anything cool on Kickstarter here recently. But I think that's a really good idea.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I haven't seen anything. And I think that's part of it is I need to maybe spend some time looking there myself as opposed to having people show me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that's good. I've actually found some things browsing around on my own. And not even necessarily pen and paper stuff, but just some really neat projects that have funded here recently just for me browsing and finding some things that you can find things that fit your style or your needs or things like that. So that's a very good one. I think we'll keep good tabs on that list and see what's out there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No doubt.