Curious Realizer - Coffee-less and Fountain-Penned
In which the M.A.D. H.A.T.T.E.R. provides two mini-essays for your consideration
Going to stretch the Curious Realizer mold for a change and give you not one but two mini-essays and then try to tie them together in a clever way. Wish me luck!
I have a confession to make, it’s something that may surprise you and may alter your opinion of me1. I don’t like to talk about it much because it’s the kind of admission that either prompts staring, shock or awkward pauses in conversation.
Here it is: I don’t drink coffee.
I’ll pause a moment to let this sink in for a moment.
Can I keep going? OK, great.
I’ll qualify my previous statement: it’s not that I never drink coffee. It's just that I might only drink 0 - 2 cups of coffee per year. I usually drink water with my breakfast and most of my meals, occasionally switching to milk or juice. And I do have a source of caffeine which I do tend to avail myself of more often than I should, albeit later in the day: diet soda, particularly Diet Pepsi.
I lump coffee in the same category as cigarettes: I never developed a taste or desire for them and I never wanted to. So I didn’t. Plus I don’t like the taste of coffee very much unless I turn it into a sugary milky mess which, let’s be honest, is probably very very bad for me.
The downside of this is that when I see people commiserating about a lack of coffee or a need for coffee to get their day started, I feel like I’m excluded2 from an enormous club of people who need caffeine to start their days, like a group of military recruits who suffered through basic training or people who’ve just finished a marathon3, starting wistfully into the distance and nodding each other, haunted by some shared wound.
It’s like seeing the cumulative effect on people who feel sad about their favorite football/basketball/hockey team getting eliminated from their playoffs, only it’s EVERY MORNING.
Same for those poor folks who are itching for their first cigarette or vape of the day. I guess I can feel some sympathy for this… definitely no empathy for it, though.
Look, I sleep pretty decently at night and I’m wired to wake up early, so I’ve never felt the need for a caffeine jolt in the morning. But I get that for many of you, drinking coffee is like taking insulin, so I can understand this.
So look, no hard feelings, right? I’ll keep making the content that you’ve come to love and expect, you can overlook this, um, deviation, right?
Right?
I’ve always been a disposable pen user. I like a fine point (0.3 to 0.7 mm) and a roller ball type of pen to boot. I like to use Sharpie S-Gel pens (0.5 mm) and I buy packs of them from, say, Wal-Mart, and write my way through them all. Uniball pens also do a good job.
Bic disposables have no place in my life.
However, I decided that I needed to step up my handwriting game so this summer I bought a fountain pen. I went with the Lamy Safari pen (note that the photo above is probably not a Lamy Safari pen). I’m still using the starter blue ink cartridge and I have a few black ink cartridges nearby, just in case. I’m using a 0.3mm nib in the pen.
I really like the Safari but I don’t use it regularly. I don’t use it for work - it would feel like using a luxury car for grocery shopping or going to the post office4. I don’t use the Safari for scrap notes or junk writing either. I reserve this pen for careful, personal writing that I want to keep for the long term, like commonplace book entries, as an example. I haven’t used the Safari much for daily journaling but I’m starting to incorporate it more for that writing.
Fountain pen writing can flow very nicely and look great but it takes a different approach. Despite the small nib size the ink is absorbed into the paper differently than my Sharpies and it tends to expand a bit. The amount of pressure you apply to the page when writing controls the flow of ink and it can get a bit messy unless you write with care. And the nib creates a different kind of friction with most kinds of paper than the Sharpie pens do.
Nevertheless, I’m happy with my investment. The Lamy Safari is relatively inexpensive and it performs very well from my perspective. Someday I may graduate to something a bit more sophisticated but I'm satisfied for the moment.
Coffee and fountain pens do have at least one thing in common5: they have their fans and there are different levels of quality and panache available forl both types of products. And, for many people, the right coffee and the right pen may feel indispensable.
To go a bit further, coffee and fountain pens push into the realm of habits and routines, if not rituals. Got to have the right tools for the job, got to have the right things in the right order at the right level of quality to do what needs to be done, right? But in a pinch, hot brown caffeine water and a cheap Bic pen will do.
And maybe that’s all I really want to propose here: although everyone has their preferred tools, their preferred environment, etc. so they can feel the right mood and feel productive, if not happy… maybe perfection isn’t always necessary to do the work? Maybe you don’t need the best and fanciest pen, notebook or beverage if you’ve got 15 minutes to work on your pet project?
Food for thought, something to ponder over your next cuppa while you update your journal.
Over to you, dear H.A.T.T.E.R.6: are you attached to having the right beverage/location/paper/keyboard or other tools to do your best work? Are you a caffeine enthusiast? Do you demand the best in fountain pens or keyboards? What’s your take on all of these? Please share your thoughts in the comments section!
Oh, probably not, but let’s just run with this for now.
Again, not really, but let’s continue to play along.
I did finish a marathon once, in about 5 hrs 15 minutes. It’s the most bucket-listy thing I’ve ever done.
More power to you if that’s what you do, of course.
Besides being used by writers for decades, of course.
H.A.T.T.E.R. = How About This Terribly Enthusiastic Reader
I have a collection of fountain pens, some expensive, some less so. My Lamy Al Star is one of my favourites for everyday use writing when I'm in the fountain pen mood.
One thing I enjoy is experimenting with different ink colours, and some permanent ("durable") inks (most fountain pen inks are water soluble - so protect your paper or it runs/erases if it gets wet). The supplier that had a good collection of "durable" ink was Noodlers (https://noodlersink.com/). You need to have either a converter or a syringe to refill your cartridges, but after having a water bottle spill erase weeks of writing one time, I found it necessary. Also, you can mix different Noodler's ink colours to create your own interesting blends. (Just don't mix their ink with other inks, that can diminish their durability).
A few weeks ago, in order to help with anxiety, I cut back from 3-4 cups of caffeinated down to 1 cup in the morning and the rest decaf. In another week I'll be moving to complete decaf and then no coffee except for on rare occasions. Stimulants, soda included, are usually acidic (bad for the teeth) and can be known to increase anxiety levels.
I agree that coffee is an acquired taste. There isn't a single person I know who said oh, yeah, the first time I had coffee I just loved it! Not unless it was loaded with cream and sugar. You won't get any guff from me... at least not about coffee 🤣