Do You Still Write With a Pen?

There is, still, something I like about writing by hand that I miss when I’m typing on a keyboard. There is a smoothness to the pen and paper and I like having good penmanship. There is no penmanship at all with a keyboard.

Today I found a note from Perfect Pen, a site selling pens and etc. They say 95% of people write their name first, when they get a new pen. I don’t know if its true. How would you find out about that. Chances are someone selling pens and seeing people test them before buying, would know. So it could be true. What did you last write, by hand? I wrote a grocery list. But I also sent out handwritten Christmas cards this year.

I write down ideas for stories or non-fiction ideas for posts to my sites. Sometimes they never become posts. Lots of ideas are written and just don’t develop further, or get mislaid somewhere, one way or another. But, I still like writing ideas more than typing them. My brain works differently while writing. A bit slower and not as directly focused on the idea while I have the distraction of the pen, paper and penmanship. More than likely that changes how the ideas develop. Typing is so instant.

National Ballpoint Pen Day is June 10th. It’s the day the patent for the ballpoint pen was filed.

Have you ever gotten into calligraphy, with fountain pens? I did a little of that. In high school I had a fountain pen. It was fun to write with but not as clean as a ballpoint pen. Of course, there have been pencils since the age of the dinosaurs (not literally). Pencils are just not the same, though artists still draw with an assortment of them.

Today, even though it isn’t Ballpoint Pen Day, take a look at all the pens you have collected, scattered, around your home. Get some scrap paper out of the recycling and test all your pens. Not many have the option to be refillable and reused now. Or, people almost never seem to do that. Too many freebie pens given away to take the time to recycle them. Unless you have a favourite pen. I did have a favourite ballpoint pen but it was kind of exotic and I couldn’t find ink to refill it. If you can find a use for the pens that no longer work, got dried out, or broken, that’s great. Most likely the best you can do is get rid of them and have that much less clutter around.

Happy pen testing. Will you scribble something or ring true to the theory that the first thing you write with a new (sort of new) pen is your name?

Bad Ideas for PenPals

I found a list of "Things You Should Not Send Your Penpal" at CityMity Penpals Blog. It was a good, sensible list.

Not many people are writing letters which are mailed though the postal system these days. I did, years ago and I started thinking to do so again. If I find someone I’d enjoy writing with. We used to exchange more than letters, stamps or postcards. There were friendship books, mail art and anything else you could fit into an envelope without too much of it sticking up from the flatness of the envelope.

One thing which is risky to exchange, seeds, or anything plant based. Very sad. Some plant things are ok, usually something which has been processed. I think you can send tea bags, but not loose tea. So, you could exchange seeds if they came from a seed company, but not seeds you collected from your own garden, or seeds you found on a road trip, in the neighbourhood, etc.

Currency is ok if it is very small in value. Very small, being less than a few dollars. I used to like seeing what change/ coins looked like from other countries. I still have some of the coins I collected from penpals.

As a teenager with a tiny budget, my biggest expense for letter writing (other than postage) was stationery. I would shop for boxes of stationery and especially if it came in its own pretty box I could keep long after I had mailed the last of the writing paper and envelopes away. You can still find beautiful or customized/ unique paper and envelopes online but a lot of it seems too girly for me now. I may end up sticking with postcards for awhile.

How to Find Penpals (Pen Pals)

My sister phoned, asking me how to find penpals for her 9-year-old daughter. This wasn’t completely out of the blue. I still have a box full of penpal letters I received all the years I wrote letters to people around the planet. I’ve got coins from other countries. I’ve got postcards too. But, I haven’t really looked at any of it for years.

I stuck with it for several years. I even met the man I ended up married to through penpal writing. That’s a long story. Now I’m looking for the next generation to start up with letter writing, finding friends by mail.

When I wrote my first penpal letter it was going to someone working in a factory where they canned pineapples. My Mother had picked out the address from the back of a can we bought at the grocery store. "Do you want to write to someone in Hawaii?"

So we sent a letter to that address. I got a reply back. I wrote to "Sushi" for years, though we never met. We wrote as we grew up, we wrote as she got married and had children. I didn’t get married until much later. At some point we stopped writing. With only one of us married and having children we just had less in common to write about.

The next time I wrote to someone it was from a penpal zine. This was before the Internet. The penpal zine was pretty cool really. I don’t know who started it (and there was actually a few of them by different people). It was created as a booklet, photocopied and stapled together. Inside were listings from people all over the world who were looking for penpals. Some of them wanted to write to people from specific countries. Most of them seemed to be from the US or Australia. Each person wrote a bit about themselves, who they wanted to write to and gave their mailing address and age.

Find penpals for young people

Find penpals of all ages

Safety Tips for Penpal Exchanges

Never go anywhere to meet a penpal (for the first few times) without an adult.
If a penpal writes something rude, or anything a kid shouldn’t be sending – tell your parents, a teacher, or another adult who can help you.
Don’t accept or send photos your parents wouldn’t approve of.
No one should be asking for your email password or your phone number. Don’t give it out.

Penpals

I used to have dozens of penpals. That was a long time ago. These days I can’t keep up with anyone’s life, barely even my own.

Today I’m looking over the penpal letters. I’ve kept them all in a bag. Most are from the 80’s. I tried to get postcards from my penpals so I could see how things looked where they were. Some would send coins too, just local currency. It cost more for the stamps to send them than the coins were worth.

As I’m going through the letters I’ve been pulling the stamps off all the envelopes. I have never been a stamp collector. My Dad has a stamp collection that’s been in limbo for at least 30 years. But someday I might find someone to donate all these stamps too. I doubt any are really valuable but someone might as well have them. It seems a shame to just toss them all out. I am keeping all my postcards and coins though. I don’t have a good place to put them and now that I’m packing its all just one more job and one more box. But, I’m not ready to toss them this move at least.

I considered starting penpaling again a few months ago. But even the couple I found interesting I never wrote back to more than once. I have plenty of nice stationery left over from the last bout of letter writing. I just don’t have anything settled right now and I do need to get some kind of focus back, a routine would probably be a good thing too.

It sounds like my Mom will drive down on Monday. I hope so. Things are not bad here but not good either. I’m definitely ready to leave and work on whatever comes next. I’m really looking forward to seeing Zack, my nephew.

Anyway, this is enough blabbling for now. I was looking at college courses online but they are too far away, too expensive or too many hours (months, years). Maybe I will find something yet. All I really want is some clue about CGI, Perl and CSS.