Editing The Pen Addict 738/transcript (section)

== Notebook Satisfaction ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I think for most people, the most satisfying is a new notebook because of the way you described it. The way you, they're all, you always got to unpack them, opening them up, like, you know, like a big stretch, you know, that the notebook gets together. I think that's great. But for you, I'm going to assume it's just the Pilot Hi-Tech C 0.3 millimeters in black. And the reason is because you've given way too much information about the product. Like, it's not just using a Pilot Hi-Tech C. It has to be in 0.3 millimeter and it must be in black, which makes me think that that is what you consider to be the most satisfying out of that list.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You broke that down insanely well. Thank you. You are correct in all the right ways. There you go. There's something about that pen that I wish it was just a better pen because it always starts off well, right? It doesn't end well. It never ends well with the Hi-Tech C. It starts, when I write with a fresh one of those, that is like the holy cow moment of stationery for me. Like, this is the essential product for Brad and how he writes and how he likes to see things on the page. And nothing makes my handwriting look cooler than that pen. And then a week later, I want to throw it against the wall, right? Yeah. It's just, it's a technical pen and the way it's designed is, it's not going to be like the most long lasting pen. It's just a little finicky in that way, which is unfortunate because it's amazing. But yeah, that's the one. I think most people would probably say the notebook, like kind of to your point. And then maybe the ink. I think the ink is a pretty good, pretty good breakdown here. So yeah, yeah, that's, that was good. So it would be interesting to hear if there's anything. What we had one in the chat, the first sharpening of a cedar pencil. That's actually pretty good. That's a very, like, I like the tactile stuff, right? The notebook is very tactile and you can feel, I love feeling like that brick shape in your, in your hand. Just like before you really, it becomes your notebook. Once it becomes your notebook, you don't notice like just the rigidity and just like the, how it's a solid object. Once you start using it, you lose that. To me, that goes away from when it was brand new. And it's just like so dense and rigid and just, I don't know. It's very cool. So I don't know. That'd be my second choice. But speaking of notebooks, Myke, I put this list in a new notebook that I'm using. One of my, one of the pen addict notebooks, the Midori ones. Because I'm trying to use this notebook more, it's kind of getting set to the side. And we'll just run through this real quick.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To say a few things. So, okay. This is your one, right? With your logo on it? Okay. Yeah. The one with my logo on it. And it's just a perfect size and perfect shape. Beautiful. And I'm, I'm using some other things instead. Like I'm still using my plotters. So I'm not, everything's not going in this notebook right now, which is kind of what I want. So I said, okay, let me just brainstorm a list. And the list is called what goes in this notebook. So I just started rattling off things here. And some of this is going to be very obvious, but there's a goal here that I'm going to get to at the end. So I'm just going to riff, riff these off here and maybe I'll stop. So, and these are all numbered on my list. I'm not going to read the number every time, but notes, ideas, pen tests, music lyrics, quotes, trip plans, shopping list, shop inventory, journaling, morning pages, book list, music list, packing list. You can tell when I get on a theme here, gear list, troubleshooting notes. I'm okay. I don't know what I was thinking there. Pickleball scores, game scores. Here's the most interesting one. I have no idea what this means and why I wrote this down. I wrote down bot poetry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Bot poetry. Yeah. Bot poetry. Like robot. Sure. Robot or not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Huh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Next one is waffle ranking, which I think is actually a pretty good one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Number 20, business frog philosophy. I think that can go in the notebook. Yeah. Actually, in every notebook. Yeah. Yeah. Jam recipes. I don't know why. Top 100 lists. They're back on the list again. Stickers, washi and ink samples. So that was my list and I'm just going to keep writing random stuff in here as I think about it. But what I'm going to do with this list is when I don't know what to write, I'm just going to go to an open page and pick out the thing on the list that I haven't written about most recently. So like I could start with number one, notes, and just go write some notes on there. Like if I don't know what to think. And then number two is ideas, which, you know, have a brainstorm. Number three is pen tests. You know, I could get a new pen and test it. So if you don't know what to write in your notebook, make a list in the front. And then when you're going, huh, I don't know what to write. You go to the list, pick one thing and do that. And I think that's going to help me with this notebook. So that's just something I'm messing with. And I wanted to play around with and wanted to mention. Bot poetry. Hmm. What could I have been thinking? Like I don't use AI. I'm not talking about like AI. I don't use AI for anything. I don't bot poetry. I must have seen something. I wonder if there was like a bot on Mastodon that did like a haiku or something. I don't know. I don't know what that could be, where I got that idea. So we'll go with it. We'll go with it. I can tell I've very much confused you on this. And you know what? I've kind of confused myself. But that's what we love doing this show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I like that. There are so many lists.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, it can't just be, okay, my goal for this notebook wasn't to make a list of the things. It was actually to do the things. Yeah. But I made a list and now I can go pick off the list and do that thing. You know, when I need a minute to, when I need 10 minutes break to just doodle and write in my notebook, I can go to this list and go, oh, you know, what's a good quote I can write down, you know, and put that in the notebook. Because there's really like no rules for this notebook that I'm currently using. So like anything can go in there. So that's something I'm working on. So we'll see how that goes. We'll follow back up and see if I fulfill any of this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like that you kind of have like an index, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And that's in the notebook. Yeah. And what's funny is it's like, it's on the second, it's on the second page. It's not even in the front. I wrote something else in there. So anyway, there's no rules. Things can go anywhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Things can go anywhere. Are we done for today? Well, I think that's a wrap. I think that's a wrap. If you would like to send in any questions for our next episode, remember if you've got any Japan-focused stuff, please send them in to penaddictfeedback.com and we'll do what we can to answer as many as possible as Brog prepares for his Japan excursion, which we're all very excited about for him and not at all jealous. I would like to thank Squarespace and Enigma Stationery for their support of this episode. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com, spokedesign.com. Brad, my spoke pen's coming real soon. It's nearly here. I'm very excited. I bought the Auto Flashdry refill because I want to try the dowdy method and see what that's all about. We'll see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you'll like it, the refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm excited. I'm excited. You can go, yeah, spokedesign.com for those. Brad, are you still streaming? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Streaming three times a week. No, like, not in general. I meant this week or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm not streaming shipping. Right. I'm not streaming shipping. I caught up. Back to regular. Regular stream. Back to the desk. So I'm starting to fulfill the St. Jude's. Nice. Incentives. So I got postcards. I got ponies to paint. And then I got some Zoom calls on YouTube that we're going to do when I get back from Japan. Love it. I'll be putting out a post on that in the coming days just to give everyone who supported that campaign, which thank you so much. Just give them an idea of what to expect. I don't want to leave them high and dry while I'm in Japan for two weeks. So a lot of it's going to be done when I get back, just as a heads up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice, nice, nice, nice. Yeah, you can find me here at Relay. Go to relay.fm. Find a new podcast. Maybe you check out Design in California. We just started a series about the iPod to celebrate the iPod's 25th anniversary, which is happening right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]