A little over a year ago, I was sitting on a couch, trying to figure out how to get my life organized. Imagine, 2021, a year and more into the pandemic. It was August, and I had made it to the weekend absolutely exhausted. With my chronic pain as bad as it was, that’s what a weeks worth of work would do to me – exhaust me. And then it would take me all weekend of doing nothing to get back into a state where I could just go to work again. My brain fog was at an all time high. Staying organized and being able to emotionally regulate felt impossible. I stopped most of my hobbies and socializing. I woke up, went to work, and then went back to bed until the next day, for months. I didn’t even have the energy to figure out how to fix it. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

What does this have to do with pens, you may ask? Well. Back to August – I’m procrastinating from doing anything useful by scrolling facebook, when I run across a post from a friend of mine. She posted a photo of one of the art journals she was playing with at the time. I’d seen her posts before, and it clicked. Maybe that’s what I needed to get back to doing – using pen and paper to stay organized. 

Back to? Yep. I’ll try and make this next bit short. Let’s back up to 2015. I’m a 20 something adult, a book bag with me everywhere I go – to make sure I had all of the essentials. I leave this bag in a car while I ran in to grab something – I come out and the car has been broken into, bag stolen. What would Spoon consider essential you may ask? Well two things, my favorite pen collection (no fountain pens yet), built up over several years – and a notebook I had in my pocket at all times and had been carrying for years. It had all of the notes for the book I was writing and a dozen other story ideas and journal entries. When it was lost, I was super upset – and decided to go digital. That way everything could be backed up, and retrieved. And I thought I was good – I felt like I’d found a great solution to staying organized. Problem solved. Then, fast forward to August 2021, I realized that this digital thing wasn’t working anymore. I wasn’t using the digital planner, I wasn’t writing in the digital journal, and I was losing track of all kinds of things, important things. I felt like a broken version of myself. Such drama. But in all seriousness, my mental health was in a very dark spot. 

Seeing my friends post on facebook sort of clicked something in my brain – maybe I should try pen and paper again? But where to even get started. I asked her what notebook she was using and she told me and then asked what I was interested in using it for? Organizing, planning, writing. Basically, a paper brain. Well – clearly I had asked the right person, because heck did she have a bunch of suggestions! We talked about notebooks, notebook covers, organization systems, pens – really, this is all my friends fault. Ahem. 

I wanted to start small – practically, and literally, turns out. I picked up a notebook cover, an A6 Hobonichi daily planner, and a blank A6 Wonderland notebook. For work I tried 4 or 5 different planner systems, and finally settled on a Techo Weeks, for scheduling and to dos. And an A5 Hobonichi Daily to keep track of what I’d done during the work day. Oh, and a sample pack of purple pens, which is where I tried out a fountain pen for the first time in recent memory. And then I got curious about fountain pens…I asked Dora – and we went down another delightful rabbit hole together. She showed me pens with different fill systems, told me where I could get ink samples so I could try out different colors, and even recommended what ended up being my first refillable fountain pen – a Twsbi Eco. Purple, of course. Purple is also the color of the first ink sample pack I ever got! All of her advice got me started, and I was able to give myself space to experiment and find something that worked really well for me. From the very start each part of the process kept me engaged and having fun. 

As I tried new things, I got more organized. I was able to self regulate more. I was journaling and waking up and wanting to do things besides sleep and go to work. My mental health was evening out enough that I could start realizing that I needed to make some changes – which we did. I was worried about this whole thing being a passing ADHD interest – but when I hit December and was still using all of the notebooks and pens and my interest kept deepening and expanding – I gave up and embraced the new me haha. 

By the end of 2021 I had started researching (Autistic Burnout, different post), I was consistently using a planner (for some one with ADHD this is impressive), and I was increasing the amount I was journaling every day (this is incredibly useful for someone who has trouble self regulating their emotions, I have found). I was appreciating the joy that sampling inks daily gave me. I was appreciating the joy I could get from a beautiful pen. I was appreciating the joy and peace I was getting from putting those beautiful pens, those gorgeous inks, onto delightful paper. And by the end of the year I had settled on a solid system for myself. I invested in duplicating that system for 2022 – and have continued trying new things! I went thru a lot of iterations between August of 2021 and August of 2022 so I won’t bore you with all of them here. Maybe I should put together a timeline of when I was using each book and pen config?

Now – what am I using these days? 

• A6 Techo Avec Cousin, which I use for a nightly journal. Just a small space to recap my day and have a moment of transition before bed. 
• A5 Wonderland, I call it my Captain’s Log – everything goes in here, journaling, workshopping, playing with new inks, more research. Whatever, it’s an undated space where I can write endlessly. (I’m on volume 3!)
• Techo Weeks, After my vacation at the end of 2021, in January I actually decided to use this for home scheduling and to-dos instead of for work. We go over this every day after breakfast, and it helps us remember things, sync on stuff, and coordinate what is needed. AND I can keep track of tasks long term. So handy. 
• For work I settled on a Kokuyo Jibun Techo Days Diary – I just needed more space than the Weeks could give me – and A5 Wonderland notebooks for meeting notes and a workbook. It works incredible well. (I use different colors pen inks for alternating lines or meetings so I can stay ORGANIZED.)
• There are a bunch of other notebooks of various sizes I use for my various hobbies, but I’ll go into those in another post. 

The pens I am using rotate every month, and each month has a theme – check out my posts on Pen Palettes to learn more. I will have been sampling inks daily for an entire year once we get to October of 2022. And I continue to find fun new things to try with all of it. I think I can safely say this is a solid special interest. 

And there’s more! Tangled up in this timeline is how I started using multiple different pens every month, sampling pen inks daily, and setting up transitions and tunnels and stopped masking and – so many things. More future posts! 

I wrote this for two reasons. The first is that seeing stories of how – and why – other folks got started really inspired me to try this out. And second, this brings me great happiness and if even a single person reads this and it gives them an idea that makes THEM happy, then I win. I guess a third reason is I am Autistic, this is a special interest, and this blog lets my info dump without irritating anyone. 

This is my first post that touches on both my disabilities and my pens! I wouldn’t have gotten started with this when I did if my mental and physical health hadn’t been so awful. So, while I can separate them sometimes, it’s all really tangled up in each other, which is part of what makes me me. Isn’t identity fun? More soon!