Why I Still Write With Ink on Paper

 

For one thing, I don't even know what a Remarkable or a Supernote is, to quote someone asking on Reddit why people still write in paper notebooks. I'm 61 years old, I'm a writer, and I resisted even using a typewriter until I saw the Internet in 1997. As with many other people, that changed things a bit for me, and I started using keyboards more than I had. But I still write a daily journal in ink in a paper notebook that fits in a pocket. Partly because I'm old, sure, but also for other reasons. 

I'm fascinated by other technologies besides pens on paper which are no longer generally considered cutting-edge. For example, mechanical watches: watches with no electricity, no batteries, powered by a spring. Revolvers as opposed to semiautomatics. Internal combustion engines, even though I'm a hair-on-fire climate activist. We should all be driving EV's or not driving at all. But I understand some of the resistance to change on this matter, the resistance which isn't built on ignorance, but on love for technologies which are being phased out. 

My brother, 59 years old, an automotive engineer and executive, tells me that offices often no longer have what we used to call office supply rooms: rooms full of paper and paper-related items such as pencils and pens and tape and staples.

So people our age are becoming odd, and started becoming odd long before we noticed it, I'm quite sure, writing in our paper pocket-sized notebooks with our fountain pens, which we clip in our waistcoat pockets alongside our pocket watches, sighting down the long barrels of our single-action revolvers while the barkeep fetches the ice-cream from the icebox for our sarsaparilla sodas, with our Model-T's idling outside besides the troughs, startling the horses. 

But there's more to it, and you don't have to be old to enjoy a good pen. I'm still very new to the pen and notebook subreddits, and so I still don't understand why everybody hates Cross pens. I still don't hate them. A two-piece Cross Bailey like the one in that picture, nice and heavy, with its rollerball and luxurious deep blue lacquer, nice and heavy, writing in a Zequenz signature notebook, is a sensual pleasure, a luxury many can afford, especially if they're no longer blowing money on gasoline.