LOGICal eMOTIONs

The Pen Analogy

// September 28th, 2008 // Brain Dump

At some point we all come to the brink of the edge where a decision needs to be made: refill the pen, or simply throw it out. Now, depending on the pen you are currently using, refilling it is likely the best course of action, yet at other times we push our chairs back, setup like Michael Jordan, and shoot from the centre line for 3 points into the garbage can.

Cheap pens we toss away when they finally run out – that is if we haven’t lost them before that happens or they haven’t been relocated by someone else to a spot in the universe not currently known to yourself. You can’t buy refill bits to insert into your $0.01 Bic or PaperMate, so we accept them for what they are and toss ‘em when the time comes.

A while back I received the pen I use the most. Colleen came home one day with a pen for me that arrived at the office as a promotional piece from a company. The pen sat around for a couple months with no takers, so Colleen brought it home to me. Turns out it was a sweet fountain pen that few in the office knew what to do with, and because it sat around for a while, the ink had simply dried up in it. If you’re not inclined to use a fountain pen to write with, you are likely less inclined to know how to get one working again…

The challenge with promotional fountain pens is that nobody knows what to do with them, and the manufacturer of such pen is generally unknown which presents it’s own problem when trying to get replacement cartridges. Sure, the outside of the pen says ‘Kodak’, and the tip says ‘Irridium’, but beyond that it is all rather vague.. After a bit of trial and error at Staples, it was determined that the pen guts resembled a Waterman the closest, and Waterman cartridges would fit the best.

Things learned after sourcing ink:

• it needs a bit of TLC every now and then
• the best ink to use is blue simply because it is the only natural ink
• black and red inks are a bunch of fakers and will clog the pen pretty quick.
• don’t lend the pen to people who don’t put the lid back on after using…

Ok, so now we have a free pen that runs out much quicker than a simple Bic, yet do you toss it when it dies or do you refill it? If we remove the preference of writing tips – meaning that personal preference of ball point or fountain tip is taken out of the equation – does it actually make sense to keep the pen?

It is occasionally troublesome, the ink doesn’t last nearly as long, the ink is comparatively more expensive, other people hate to use it (not necessarily a bad thing), and it requires a certain amount of delicate handling so you don’t get ink splattering everywhere…

So do we toss the pen or keep it? My personal preference is to keep it. I decided a while back (essentially when I got the pen) that if I am going to dip back into actually writing something down (analog) then I might as well use a pen that forces better penmanship (allegedly) and requires a bit of extra care. Sure I could use a cheap pen that I would lose on an insanely frequent basis, but with a specific writing instrument you’re more likely to take care of it and claim it as your own.

What’s my point, right? Everyday we have tools available to us and everyday we have the choice to make various tools worth keeping or completely disposable. Some which are worth keeping we throw out, and others that should be thrown out we keep around for far too long. Then there are even those which at first appear to be worthless, yet when looked at closely, cleaned up a bit, protected against misuse, and guarded from others intentions, sometimes the just turn out to be one of the best.

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