Pens

It annoyed me no end that Shop-Rite put cheap stick pens on sale for their back to school offerings, Papermate one week, Bic this week, but only had black, not blue.  I need neither, but bought a package of black Papermate pens anyway for 99 cents and got a raincheck for the blue variety which remains baited and switched.  I found a package from previous years and transferred it to my active plastic case to the left of my desk.  

I like pens.  Pharmaceutical reps used to drop them off in abundance.  When I worked for the VA, they had government issued white with black strip stick pens in red, blue, and black, though only black could be used for a patient chart.  Another hospital had pens in black, blue, green, and red with free-flowing ink.  I buy some on my own, multicolor.  For daily and weekly planning I color code black, blue, red, green, and purple.  I also have yellow that I don't use for anything.  While cleaning My Space to make it functional, I found and harvested a red Flair pen.  When I needed to spend a little more at Amazon to get free shipping on the item I actually needed, I added the frivolity of a cartridge pen, one of my very favorite items from my own grade school days.  I even still have one, though the cartridges seem to have been discontinued.   And I have gel pens of various brands and colors.  

They are stored in boxes, plastic cases, arise from two cups within reach on my main desk and in repurposed clear peanut containers on my secondary desk.  Some remain in their blister packs.

I don't know what generated my fondness for pens, or even prompted manufacturers to create so many kinds.  I suspect this allure is shared by many others, as people trying to sell things offer them as giveaways, contracting their suppliers to design advertising economical enough to be disposable yet memorable enough to associate the company with something you might want to buy.

As the world moves from handwriting to keyboards, from signatures to e-sign, the popularity of the pen has probably started to fade.  Pharmaceutical companies have not been permitted to drop them off at the doctors' offices for some 20 years.  My own Cross Pens, nearly all gifts to commemorate an occasion, sit in a drawer unused.  They still come up on back to school promotions, though now only the stick pens are cheap.  But my own collection, really needing no more additions, seems inexhaustible.  The allure of the varieties has not faded at all.

Pens for Different Purposes

Being from an era when pharmaceutical representatives made a point of leaving me with a pen with their drug's logo at each encounter, I never became attached to individual pens, other than a few Cross Pens given to me as gifts or my father's ink pen and pencil set that I inherited. Those all stay in a drawer.  Over the years, though, I've focused more on daily and weekly planning where I've color coded my intents by categories.  What began as a Bic 4-color pen that I kept in the leather mini-loop of my Franklin Planner has expanded to something much more elaborate, further entrenched as a ritual as I established My Space.  My desktop now has a variety of pens allocated to specific purposes.

Daily planning takes place over four sets.  Three are kept in what is effectively a planning bag.  The colors are Black=ordinary activities, Green=professional activities, Red=family or finance, Blue=House, Purple=Notes for each activity.  I have two sets of Bic stick pens.  Black and purple are constant but red, green, and blue come in both bold and pastel shade.  I use either all bold or all pastel.  In the same black nylon bag I keep a set of Dollar Store color retractables of the same colors. I use either all stick or all retractable.  I've had other series, Flair pens that are too broad to put on my limited page and wonderful Magna Tank gel pens that Walmart used to sell.  These had a tendency to leak but vivid colors and a somewhat heftier barrel.  They are no longer suitable as I now use a highlighter for those activities that are part of my semiannual plan.  The gel pens smear with the highlighter.  And next to my desk, I keep a blue and black stick pen at my right hand and a green and red stick pen in a cup to my right with a picture of Honest Abe that I got from his museum in Springfield.  I use that set on occasion, maybe once or twice a week, omitting purple.

Behind the black nylon pen case I keep two marble notebooks.  The gray one gets filled out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays after the evening planning session noting my weight, waist circumference, BP, treadmill attainments and comments about how I slept or felt that past week.  The orange one gets filled out most days with a gel pen rotating from red, blue, black from the Dollar Store.  I call that Hakaras HaTov, three items during the day that went well.  Those pens have a short life span, pretty much depleting over just a few months.  I won't replace them.  Magna Tank would have been ideal for this had they made a better product.

None of this changes my productivity, but reinforces a need for ritual and recognition.  I retain enough variability to require a decision on which set each evening along with a commitment to use the set that I have chosen.  Those few minutes thinking about how I did the previous day and what I expect of myself tomorrow have become a daily destination with ritual objects, however trivial, dedicated to what is among the most important of my daily tasks.