pen habits & handwriting [pic heavy]

Some of these sights may be familiar to some of you if you’ve been around awhile. But you’ll definitely get more backstory this time. Come, let us behold my still-present, long-standing, love of writing instruments and how I use them.

I’ve had this pencil box since late April/early May of ’95. My parents and I had moved to Paris, TX in April, close to Easter/spring break. We were living in an apartment at the time and the next door neighbors had kids that were in high school. The kids had been home upon our arrival and so my parents assumed the schools were on spring break, and, thus, weren’t in a hurry to get me registered for school. About the time that it was nearing a couple of weeks, and my parents were beginning to wonder about the Paris, TX school system and their lengthy vacations, my dad was talking to the neighbors and found out they homeschooled their kids. The gauge they’d been using to enroll me was a faulty one. This was quickly remedied and, while getting me set up at the school’s office, they handed us a list of school supplies I was going to need. It was rather long and included many art supplies. This pencil box was on the list. My first week in, I found out I only had five weeks left and I hardly touched most of the stuff that was on the supply list in that time. Still, I have a thing for school/office supplies so I was okay with it. I started homeschooling the next year and eventually worked my way through most of what I had on hand, either for school or just on my own. In any case, after I was out of the Paris school system, this is where my pen collection started living, and has been there since then.

I’ve gone through this box a few different times and rid it of pens that have fallen so far out of favor I wasn’t bound to be using them any time soon. I don’t really use ballpoints much at all anymore, but I have some and they do come in handy for numerous reasons. Whether it be the color variation at my disposal or if I just need something to take with me that I don’t really care about should it not make it back home again. There are a few different gel pens in the mix, too. I prefer gel pens. These are often colors I don’t use regularly (blue included. I prefer black.) The "PenAgain" package is there because it seemed the best way to keep track of the two refills that came with it. There’s also the box for the "space pen" that resides in a leather notebook (I’m realizing now that I didn’t get photos of either of those). It’s in there because it won’t leak and so there will always be a pen handy there. I usually have my favorite pen at the time on me, so I don’t really use the space pen frequently. But it brings me comfort by being where it is.

These are the pens and highlighters (and post-its and some of the books, though it’s mostly notebooks in this shot) that reside next to my bed. The Sharpie Pen and the squishy grip Uniball Signo (featured in an upcoming photo) are my favorites of the bunch. The weird red pen in the foreground is the PenAgain. I like the idea of it, and that it’s supposed to be more ergonomic. But it’s a ballpoint and I have it next to my bed, which isn’t the best place for attempting to use it more frequently, as I do most of my writing there propped up on my elbow(s) usually, and that position quickly leaves me frustrated and longing for the familiarity of my other writing instruments. So I go back to them.

This would be the reason for the multiple post-its. It’s a haphazard color coding. It’s mostly quotes I want to keep in front of me on a regular/semi-regular basis. Having them on different colors makes it easier to find something if I’m looking for it. Also, there’s my other bedside table. I’m not partial to the lamp. At all. But it’s functional, I’ve had it since I moved to New York and I’ve just not gotten around to replacing it. The alarm clock is older than I am. I think I inherited it when I was 9. It’s been with me since. It’s flat surface makes it handy for this configuration and it has a soft spot for being one of those constants in my life since I can remember. The wee detritus in front of the alarm clock is as follows: Carmex Moisture Plus lip balm (my current favorite – I have even more of a thing for lip balm than pens), coaster, the brownish tube-y spot is Body Shop’s Hemp lip balm, then Burt’s Bees lemon butter cuticle cream. The remote is for my stereo. The green basket is holding a bizarre miscellany of things like cotton gloves, hand lotion, Advil gel caps, Premsyn PMS, holistic leg cramp pills, two sets of ear buds, cough drops and I think there’s a dose of NyQuil caps in a blister pack, a remainder of the head cold from New Years’. Oh, there are a couple of mini-books in there, too. The big book on the end is Cloud Atlas – one of the two books I’ve got going right now, but haven’t been reading much of.

These are the pens by my bedroom door. My room isn’t huge, and my purse is actually closer to the door (as you will soon see) and has pens in it. But I find this convenient, in case I need to pop in quickly and grab a writing instrument for whatever has provoked the need to arise.

This is the top of the bookcase next to my bedroom door where my pens (and other things) live. Left to right: Purse (that of the aforementioned wish fulfillment), roll of paper towels (such as it is. they are a handy addition, I’ve found, if weird) sunglasses case with sunglasses inside, two tubs of Body Shop lip gloss, one in Sparkling Cranberry, the other in Apricot Shimmer (I think those are the names, at least), the pens, three notepads stacked on top of each other, my charging station, a pair of sunglasses at the ready that are the "knock around" pair – for when I’m doing things where my sunglasses may come to harm, a candle in "Winter" that I’m still trying to decide if I like, a djembe that I’ve yet to learn how to play, but was a gift from a friend when I said something about wanting to learn how to play bongos at some point, and on the very edge, a bookmark made by another friend.


This is in the living room. I’ve discovered I keep pens around in nearly the same fashion I keep lip balm around. They’re strategically placed and at the ready. The notepad is cute (and from the beloved Wegmans), though not terribly functional. It’s working sort of like scrap paper right now. Which is all I need it for. The pen is from Uniball. It came to me in the mail as part of their promotion to get people onto their "anti-check fraud pens" bandwagon. The point is almost too fine, even for me (and I tend to like them fine). So… it’s sort of with the penguin paper in the functionality department.

The pen in the foreground is my beloved squishy grip Uniball Signo. It has probably been my favorite pen the longest, though the Sharpie Pens have since dethroned it. The other pen is from my local yarn store. It is a ball point and its grip isn’t really squishy at all. But it is my latest acquisition and I bought it for the argyle. And I actually shrieked in the store when I saw it, "Oooh! THIS IS TOO CUTE!" I was waiting for some yarn to be wound into a ball. And I so obeyed the impulse to buy the pen.

These are the pens that live in my purse. The Sharpie Pen, because it is my favorite writing instrument. And the wee Pilot G-2 mini in pink. My purse is the only place where I favor click pens over the capped variety. Sometimes I need a pen and I need to be able to get it out and operate it one-handed. The diminutive size was a plus in other purses where the pocket in which it resided was shorter, making it the only pen that really fit where I wanted to keep it. This is where I want an odd colored ink, too. It makes clearly seeing if I’ve gotten everything on shopping lists (mostly of the grocery variety) easy, since the lists are written in black (sometimes blue) ink.

This is pure, unadulterated sloppy handwriting. I feel a little vulnerable right now. I discovered it upon flipping open the notebook. It’s the nearly finalized playlist I was making for my grandmother’s Christmas mixed CD. (It started in 2001, I think, when she was visiting my mom and I, and we had her decide on some songs she’d like on a CD. A few years later, in 2004, I think, she’d come up with a list of other songs she wanted. 2005 found a collaborative effort between a short list of requested songs, plus a few others my mom and I thought she would like. 2006 and onward, I’ve made her a mix CD for Christmas every year of stuff I think she might like. She usually likes at least a few in the mix. Sometimes it all even grows on her with a few listens. In any case, this is the Christmas 2010 mix. I think this is what got committed to CD. Or it’s very close, in any case.

Finally, a somewhat more formal approach to the writing bit (and I wound up switching notebooks). Complete with a touch of the caffeine shakes (diet Code Red Mountain Dew being consumed about the same time as an energy booster supplement that you momentarily forgot about containing caffeine makes for a perplexing hour or two as you try to figure out why a single can of the Dew is giving you the shakes).