Editing The Pen Addict 408/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pen Ink Management ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. So when you choose a pen and you say, Oh, I want to use this pen today. And, or for what I'm doing right now. And you start writing with, and you go, Oh, it's out of ink. What do you do with that pen?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I put it back. Okay. It just goes back in the, in the, in the, it's, you have like a big dudek block, right? They're all like standing there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not a dudek block,

'''Myke Hurley:''' but, but yeah, someone, something made it to. Yes. And then you'll go, Oh, I should choose another one. Like then how do you choose like the next pen? You're like, you're just like, Oh, this is all by feel. Like,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' what do I feel like I want to, what pen do I feel like I want to use right now? That's what I grabbed for. Right. And then when one's empty, it's like, Oh, so what one am I feeling now?

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then we've reached a point now where they're mostly empty.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How are you going to handle this situation? As someone who historically, and I'm not saying this in a negative way, you're like not a big fountain pen maintenance guy, right? Like I'm saying this because we have listeners that will do that, that do the same thing. Like there's no right or wrong here. I'm just trying to, as someone who's like diligently a fountain pen maintenance guy, this type of situation is beyond my reasoning scope. So I want to know, how are you going to handle this? Are you going to take three pens, clean them up and reink them? Are you going to take 20 pens and just jam in the ink that was in there before without cleaning them? What's the next step? This is what I wanted to ask you and how are you going to rectify? Oh, I have so many pens that are out of ink. How does Myke fix that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what I will do is I can get into like the thin end of the wedge of this problem, which is like, so I keep going through this. It gets to a certain point and then I will be like, all right, today's the day I got to fill my pens. So I will go and get every ink. It's an annual tradition. Well, I see, you know, it happened. I'll go and get all my inks and I'll put them on the desk. I'll get all my pens. I'll see what needs to be refilled and then I'll refill. And if, you know, I'll clean out pens where I'm changing the inks. I'm going to be completely honest here. The orange ink is like, who knows what orange ink was in this pen. So I'll just pick one because, you know, Oh my God, it's, it's, you know, it's much for much, right? Like, it's just like, well, this one feels like it's going to be fire on fire. This one feels like it's going to be Hiroshizuku for Yugaki. And then I'll just fill it up again. Right. It's like, it's all good. It's all liquid.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But by and large, I have a lot of pen pairings, but the orange ones, it's kind of just like, let's just see. I'll pick one, put it in there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think half our listenership just fainted.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've got to let me live my life.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I am not. I am not telling you to do it another way. This is not directed at you. I know. I, I'm a little bit flummoxed on the orange situation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have like five pens that orange ink goes into, and I have like four orange inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So like, according to me, with your theory, you have one orange ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Is what you just explained to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You do not have four. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You have a singular orange ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There is, there are two pens where I know which oranges go in them. Okay. The other two, it's like a roll of the dice. We're not so sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's awesome. Whatever one. I love you right now. This is great. Do you though? Okay. I do. I do. I do. Because this is not out of the realm of possibility for, you know, people in this situation. I mean, it's, it's definitely on, on the far end of the scale, but okay, let's not, let's, let's move past the oranges. What if we're not using oranges? Are we cleaning? If we're going from purple to blue, we're cleaning, right? 100%.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If I, if like the ink color is changing, I will clean them. And, or if I know I'm changing ink, then I will clean them. But like, if I don't know, then I just won't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you have any sort of tracking situation? And the answer has to be no, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No,

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think I would like that though. Okay. We're going to talk about that. I know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it would, I think so like, you know, the way I am is the way I am. It's not the way I want to be. Fair. That's totally fair. Like I get that. What I am.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not trying to change you. I'm not trying to change your habits.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' the reason I don't do this stuff frequently is because I just feel like I don't have the time to handle the, the, the maintenance.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, you have 35 pens inked up at once. That would last some people a year. Like you don't have time because you don't have time. You don't need the time. If they're all inked at some point, they'll run out. But like I said, it's an annual tradition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I also refuse to not have them all linked up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. That's a statement. That's a statement. Yeah. That's a, that's an interesting statement. There's a lot to take. I want them all.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I want them all here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's a reason you own the pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. I want to use them all. Right. Like, you know, I will use them every week. Every pen will get used at least once. I believe that. Yeah. Right. And like, sometimes if I'm doing like a long recording, so like if I'm recording like Cortex, right, I get like 15 pens and put them next to me. And I just like cycle through them as I'm recording. And I just do these little doodles and stuff and write little notes for myself. But like, not, not like the notes I do here where they're for editing, but like, I might write like a little quote down or like whatever, but I'm just picking up and cycling through the pens as I'm going and just like doodling and coloring stuff in and like whatever. So like, you know, I use them that way. But every, uh, every show that I record, I use two pens. Every time I write in my journal, I use two pens. It's like I use them all, right? That's why they're empty.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's no doubt in my mind that you get a lot of use out of the pens that you own. There's no doubt in my mind. it's just when it's time for when they run out of ink, there's, there's lots of questions that I'm a little bit concerned about.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, I will, you know, I will clean a pen if like it visibly seems like it needs it. It has, you know,

'''Myke Hurley:''' it has orange ink in it. So yeah, no, I get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Unless it has orange ink in it. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm regretting writing this down maybe a little bit.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. But like, you know, I just feel like I know that the gold ink goes in those two pens. So like, I just put the gold ink back in those two pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say this to you. I don't, I'm not saying it to totally defend you. You don't need any defense. You do not have a lot of different inks. I mean, you have plenty of inks. You do not have stupid numbers of inks like a lot of us do, right? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I maybe have total like 25 inks, but we'll only use, I only ever use like 10, right? Like I don't use all my ink, right? Cause I have a lot of colors. Like I don't really like that much. Sure. So, you know, like I bought one and it's like, yeah, I got bought it. Say like, I buy like a green. Then I buy like a better green. I just use the best green whenever I want to use green. I don't use both greens. Maybe you do. No. Cause I know, I know what color. Right. So like at the moment, what I'm saying is you fill them up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, Oh, why did I do this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' You threw me for a loop on that one, on that orange talk. So I, I, we should probably put a bow in this. We should put a bow in this for, this could go on for a half an hour.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the pen addict. If you want to support the show, you can support us directly or support our sponsors, Squarespace and the Canalea Penco. Thank you so much to them for our support of this episode. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com, knock.co. You can find Brad at twitch.tv slash penaddict at 10 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Eastern time, baby. You can go to Twitter is dowdyism or penaddict on Instagram. I am I Myke. I am Y K E. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next time. Please don't be mean. Bye bye. Everybody say goodbye, Brad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Goodbye, Brad.

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