During the COVID lockdown, like everyone else, I needed a hobby. I thought about learning to master sourdough bread. It was all the rage. But, given the gym was closed, the last thing I needed was a hobby that encouraged me to consume more calories. Sooner or later, I’d have to swap my sweatpants for jeans and pants.
So, I bought a few fountain pens, ink, and a nice journal, and started writing whatever came to mind.
Of course, I could have written on odd scraps of paper with one of the many pencils I own — I have a longstanding fascination, bordering on addiction, with collecting and using pencils. But I felt the dark lockdown days of COVID were worth memorializing in ink on nice paper.
For the ink, I settled on Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-peki. It’s a gorgeous shade of blue. Not too light, not too dark. It’s just ‘right.’ And, it comes in a stunning glass bottle.
I did try some green ink. I thought it would be a light, happy color to counter the gloom of the ever-increasing pandemic deaths. But I soon realized green is more suited to a crazy-man manifesto.
I also bought notebooks filled with Tomoe River paper. This is the paper that received positive reviews on every YouTube channel on fountain pens, and they weren’t exaggerating. It is a very, very nice paper to write on with a fountain pen.
So, what did I learn from all this writing on fine paper with my not-too-blue ink?
Firstly, and most unexpectedly, writing with a pen and ink really — and I mean really — improved the quality of my writing on electronic devices. I’m not sure why. But it did. Secondly, I found that writing with a pen made me more aware of what I wanted to record. That, of course, wasn’t so unexpected.
Now that the pandemic is a faded memory, I’m still hooked on pens, ink, and paper. I just bought ‘one last fountain pen’, a few more bottles of ink, and a load of paper and notebooks from Japan. The benefits are well worth the time and expense.