Do you journal?
I’ve journaled on and off since I was a kid. Some of my journals I still have, and some I have no idea where they are, others I started and never filled. I started this year with wanting a returning to journaling.
Much of my journaling over the past decade has been online via my blogs, and I’m grateful for those. I’d love to figure out how to get them printed, because those are my records of motherhood and my kids growing up.
With attempting a new foray into journaling I had to prepare myself with all the things. Wait, What? What things you ask. A journal and pens.
I have an old Mead 5 Star 5 subject notebook, college ruled, that’s about 6×9″ and I love that for notes and keeping track of things, when I used to have things to keep track of…before this pandemic. But I wanted something more “official”.
It needed to be pretty, college ruled lines, durable, lots of pages, and preferably spiral bound (because it’s so much easier to write in). That’s not what I ended up with.
I had seen one at Target that I kind of liked, but it wasn’t just right (not spiral bound), so I didn’t get it. Then I never saw another one even remotely close.
I ordered several from Amazon, but ended up returning them. I went back to Target and they were gone, I checked several Targets and finally found something similar. Sold!
That was last Summer…it sat, and sat, and sat…waiting. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Then it was 2020 and I felt like it’s now or never, but the whole idea was so built up in my mind that I was still terrified. What if I screwed this whole thing up? *eye roll*
It’s a journal, MY journal. It’s not a leather bound first edition of some classical work. I forced myself to write in it. But before I did, I had to figure out the next most important part of journaling: The Pen.
I’m a bit of a pen snob. I’m particular to how a pen feels in my hand, how it drags on the paper, what shade the ink is, and a variety of other idiosyncrasies that I can’t put to words to explain.
I’ve always used Pentel RSVP pens…it’s been my favorite since high school, and I buy them in the huge boxes…black ink, of course. Everyone kept saying to get Gel pens; I’ve tried them and never liked how they dragged on the paper, spit inky blotches, or smeared.
Then someone suggested Energel Needle Tip pens (0.7mm), so I splurged on them. Surprisingly I liked them. They wrote nicely, the colors were dark, there was no spitting or smudging. Works for me! Depending on what I’m doing I actually prefer them now to my RSVPs.
But I was still leary of doing something so *permanent* in a journal…wasn’t there an option for a pen that was colorful and wrote nice, but was still erasable. I mean, we had erasable pens back in the 80s, don’t they still exist?!
Not only did I find erasable pens, but erasable gel pens in 14 different colors. Yes! I tested them out before and they’re pretty cool. It’s a heat thing; the friction of the “eraser” makes the ink invisible. If you put it in the freezer the ink shows back up in a few minutes. Kind of cool for secret messages.
What did I end up actually using in my journal though? It wasn’t the erasable pens, I actually started writing with the purple EnerGel. I liked they way it wrote, I can kind of make it thicker or thinner depending on how I hold the pen. I also liked how the purple accented the turquoise cover of the journal.
I went to put my colored gel pens in my bedroom desk and opened the drawer to find ANOTHER pack of gel pens (not erasable) that I couldn’t remember when I bought. I looked on Amazon….the end of last summer. Not that long ago. Now they all sit on my desk looking pretty. I don’t write with them very often, usually only in notecards.
