Editing The Pen Addict 71/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pens ==


'''Ana Reinert:''' So, but I do think I, my, my instinct, if I were to at this point, give advice to somebody buying their first pen, what your first fountain pen to definitely buy it from a reputable vendor, buy it from somebody that, that has gotten good feedback places like Goulet and Jet Pens and, um, Colt Pens. And if you get it and it doesn't write, call them, email them and say, is there something I'm not doing? I'm not sure. I mean, like, don't risk looking like an idiot, um, on the offhand chance that you end up, you know, waiting too long and you've exceeded their, you know, whatever their return policy is. Because at a certain point, if it's not writing for you, send it back, have them send you another one, you know, or at least get your money back and say, okay, maybe I need to wait until I can go to a pen show and try pens or, you know, a pen shop where I can actually walk in the door and use it first before I buy it. So, but that, yeah, that's the biggest thing. I wouldn't buy it on Amazon or eBay or something if you're, if this is your first foray.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. I think that's great advice. I think that's perfect. All right. So we got a, we have a few more topics that I reached out on Twitter when, um, um, I booked you on the podcast and said, Hey, anything, you know, you guys want to know from me or from Anna, um, she's going to be on the podcast and, uh, we'll do these kind of rapid fire stuff. Cause we got some good, um, good, good Twitter questions. And I thought this first one was perfect. It's from, uh, at Janice Marie. And she said, um, she said, Anna is the perfect person to talk about desk accessories with when you're in, where, when you're in cubicle hell, what makes your life better? And I know you, you, you're a, you're a desk gear aficionado, um, looking at all, you like all the retro stuff, you know, you like looking at other desks and things like that. So how can we make cubicle hell better, Anna?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, uh, my very first advice is if there's an aesthetic that you like that your beige cubicle or your gray desk doesn't have going on, bring it in from home, you know, go hit the places that, you know, in my case I do, I hit a lot of antique malls and vintage places and the plastic swing line stapler went away and the vintage, you know, shiny silver stapler came in, you know, and, um, you know, put pictures or calendar that appeal to you, hang it on your wall or your cube. I mean, those are, those are the first things is like, if they, if they give you ugly office supplies, bring stuff from home, bring the stuff that you like. Don't, you know, we bring our own pens because we don't like the ones that they have in the supply closet. Um, but places that have good options are places like, you know, I mean like poppin has color coordinated. If you want all green, you can go to poppin. Um, you know, and, um, I did find like one of the places that I didn't expect to find really good selection of kind of fun, different office supplies was the, it's actually a shop that sells clothes, but it's called mod cloth and they have a whole section on

'''Brad Dowdy:''' office supplies. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I'll check that out. Yeah. I can't, I don't have my desk like fully decorated out, but I'm trying to think, I don't think there's one thing on the desk that isn't mine except for like the phone. You know, I think I've brought in everything, every, you know, every piece of hardware that I use, every piece of decoration that I use, you know, pictures, you know, drawings from my kids and pens. And I mean, even down to like my mouse pad and stuff is like something that I've brought in, you know, that it makes me feel more comfortable at work and things like that. And so I think that's, that's the key is, you know, hopefully you're a company. Hopefully your company lets you for one, bring in your stuff and, um, two, you know, make it your own and, uh, don't worry about other people making fun of you because, uh, cause they don't have a clue. They're the ones with the cluttered filled paper, high desk and the, the big pens. And, you know,

'''Ana Reinert:''' there is a guy at Hallmark who actually brought in wood flooring and put it under his desk so that it didn't, it wasn't on the sort of psychedelic gray spiral carpeting that we have. And I mean, I walked by his cubicle and I'm like, really? You brought in wood floor? Okay. Whatever floats your boat. But I mean, it is. And I mean, Hallmark is, I mean, we're notorious. Like we hang stuff from the ceilings. Um, at my, I'm actually like outposted right now, but over my regular desk is a giant, um, Chinese paper, uh, parasol. That's cool. Which I hang over the fluorescent lights because really who wants to look at popcorn ceiling and fluorescent tubes? Gosh, I know. Um, but I mean, like every, like everybody at Hallmark, there's, you know, people make those big tissue puffs and hang them up and there's all cut. There's, I mean, you know, people bringing those cutouts of, of, uh, you know, from the movie theater of their favorite, you know, character actor. I mean, there's, there must be a half a dozen Chewbaccas in various places and the characters from Twilight and, you know, but we're all, we all decorate our space and make it our own. And I think most offices, you might not be able to hang things from the ceiling or, you know, put a giant Chewbacca, but you know, I mean, you can bring a calendar and hang it on that has, you know, beautiful pictures of travel destinations or, you know, the kinds of things that just make the space feel a little bit better. But I will have a post up on my site sometime by this weekend of some visuals of some cool desk accessories for the cubicle pound.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that's awesome. Awesome. I look forward to that. All right, let's handle one more. And then, uh, I think we gotta, we gotta wrap this, but this was a good question. Um, from Vaughn Johnson. He said, how much time each week do the two of you spend with your blogs? How big of a time commitment is required? Do you want to take that one first? I want to hear what you have to say. It takes a lot of time. I don't know that I've timed it per week. Um, I tend to do everything in big batches. Um, and then have things ready to post at later dates, but per week, if I average it out, it's gotta be

'''Ana Reinert:''' seven, eight hours a week easily. Okay. I'm cause I'm, I'm right in the same in the, about the same space. I think I actually spend a little bit more time, but I do post a little bit more frequently than you do. Right. Yeah. Um, but I estimated that I spend at least, I mean, if I just count like prepping posts and looking for information or doing written reviews and photographing and processing the photos and all of that kind of stuff, um, each post is a minimum usually of an hour. Right. Give or take depending. I mean, I do some that are a little bit faster, but I do batch process a lot of stuff like that, where if, if it's a, if it's not time related or it's not a brand new product that I want to make sure gets up as soon as possible for people. If it's something I found, that's a vintage thing. I sort of will queue those up for later in the week. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm somewhere between eight to 12 hours a week.