Fountain Pens

In part just to be able to write with my fountain pen, I used to write long letters to friends in different parts of the country. Then email came along, and I mostly used my fountain pen to take lab notes in grad school and to do derivations of formulae. Now I use it to write in my daily planner or to make margin notes on post-its in the books I read. I love how the slipping friction of the nib feels on paper, but I don't have much use for pens at all anymore. I don't have lab notes or need to derive formulae, and I don't have that much to write to anyone anymore.

Rationalizing my Addiction

Part of my problem in developing a coffee habit was simply practical. Coffee doesn't seem to make me a happy "coffee achiever" unless it's delicious and strong. My description of this is that coffee takes my mood and runs (leaps! sprints! gallops!) with it, so if I'm cranky that the coffee tastes bad, then I won't be able to work afterwards, caffeine or no. Thus to have the chance of a productive coffee buzz, I need to hand pour the coffee through grounds in just the right way, etc., at least twice a day. You can see this is risky. Now, however, I make enough coffee for the whole day and pour out enough for morning, afternoon, and evening at the time I need some. The larger batch reduces the fluctuations in quality and the coffee keeps pretty well in a jar in the fridge all day. Why, this could even work if I actually got a job or something.

The other part of the problem, though, is why I even need a coffee habit, or, rather, want one. The real answer is that I don't and probably shouldn't have one at all. But that is of the same vein in which I should probably stop drinking alcohol, too, and I am not ready to do that. This gets into all sorts of zen issues about how "I" will never be ready to give these things up, that that is not the nature of the small self. However, at the moment, it feels (illusory, I know at some level) like I need these things to keep myself going through the job search process. I tell myself that I can, and may actually need to, give these things up after I have a stable job. We'll see, I hope.