A pen challenge for you

A few conversations on permies lately touched on pens and our expectations for them.

I was really surprised to learn that people don't expect their pens to last. The expectation is that they are easy to come by and quick to loose or wear out. So a new pen every month or week isn't such a big deal.

Actually, I was shocked to learn this. If my pen lasts less than 20 years, I'm upset. I expect 50 to 100 years life expectancy for pens.

Is this a leftover idea from quills? One expects a quill to wear down after so many hours use, but every writer knew how to make a new one, and birds loose their feathers every year. It's a free and renewable resource that comes from birds and composts into soil.

Possibly it's because of the material culture we live in, we don't think twice about the energy and resources it takes to make a pen. We don't think about the permanent harm that that pen can cause to the environment once it is 'disposed of'.

Sure, many people don't use pens anymore. The ecological considerations of that are a topic for another (cider press) thread.


Actually, the other day I was mulling this over and I realized it's not about pens. Pens are a tiny symptom of our societies world view. On this site we talk about growing permanent food systems, building houses to last generations, cutting down on energy needs with rocket mass heaters and stoves, financial frugality, and a whole range of ideas for making the world a better place. I am hugely inspired by that. I often feel I have a long way to go before my life can be called sustainable, and I think the pen makes a great starting point for me and maybe for others too.


So here is my challenge; actually three challenges, for you:

1. Observe pens. You don't need to change your behaviour, just observe. Observation is the first step in permaculture, it's how we learn to see naturally occurring patterns. Observe the ecology of pens. If you go to the bank teller, notice the pen on a chain. How about a pen teetering on the edge of a storm drain as you cross a busy street? Do you use a pen for a shopping list? Are there pens in your workspace? How about a pen for circling all the wonderful things in the seed catalogue you hope to buy once the next pay check comes in - this always reminds me of my childhood when we had the great big Sears catalogue and I would spend hours choosing which items I wanted to circle for my Christmas wish list - that too involved using a pen. Where did you used to use pens but don't anymore? Is there a quality that makes one pen easier to use than another? Just observe pens, think about pens, notice patterns in pen behaviour. This is your challenge: Observe.

2. For the more stout-hearted of you, here's your second challenge. Hold on to your pen. Decide on one pen and see how long you can hold on to it. This doesn't mean locking it up in a safe spot, make this the pen you use daily. You are probably not going to get 50 years use out of an ordinary disposable pen, but maybe your usual pen-life is 3 days, maybe you can extend that to a week, or a month? Or longer?

3. If you are still with me at this stage, then your next challenge is to apply the first two challenges to some other object in your life that untill now, you give little thought to. Rubber bands, the power cord for your phone, magazines, a hair elastic... something physical in the world, but small and insignificant.

I think my pens go to a big pen mountain somewhere - hmm, "hold onto my pen" that's a very good challenge!

This would be really boring - I use a pen to sign important documents...

I bought myself a box of really good quality pencils with slightly softer leads than the usual. I use the first one *all* the time, but usually just for little notes, so it's lasted over a year.

Hubby was coveting it a while ago, but I gave him the squint eye - he only likes pencils with really sharp points so he'd eat one up in no time hardly. Me - I'll just touch up the tip with a small pencil sharpener, and hardly waste a bit of lead.

I'm also known to use what we call, "click pencils" (AKA mechanical pencils). I have some, but I haven't looked to see if there are soft leads for them. The regular leads seem to break for me.

I will try to think of something else in my life that is worth this challenge!

I'm finding it hysterical and curious that this thread was started 9 years ago and no one commented until now!! What on earth brought it up after being lost for so long, lol?

So, pens & me:
I use pens until they no longer work. When they start to go, I flick my wrist and fling them hard, point down, and sometimes that helps get ink down to the point. This works for another few uses or weeks but eventually it dies. I keep 1-2 pens in my purse, and recently I finally gave up on one and threw it out. It was in pieces. I kept trying to put it back together but it would fall apart again. Sometimes I even took just the inner skinny part and tried painstakingly writing with that, but as I grabbed for it one time in public I thought that might look rather odd and pitiful, or like I was some kind of whacky eccentric miser, so I searched and found another pen in my bag. I'd like to say I don't mind being thought of as whacky or eccentric.... but the miser part? "Not wasteful" is what I'd call it, but my ego feared embarrassment and won. Soon after, finally, hesitantly, sorrowfully, I threw away the handful of pieces from my bag that I assumed were the pen's remains.

So don't anybody tell me I'm a pen-waster! lol

And let's hope I didn't throw away part of another pen!

Wow, writing that felt like a work of art; I should come to "Meaningless Drivel" more often! And I don't even need a pen!

Hi Kim, I was just going down 'similar threads' rabbit holes and stumbled across it somehow.... I found it profound and a useful thought exercise in promoting less wasteful behaviour and was surprised it had no responses. You can also find threads with zero responses on the 'topics' button at the top on desktop view too. I also have a problem with disappearing pens as I said above.
Also why is it all the pens in the pen pot seem to not work, why do I manage to hold onto those and lose the good ones?

Kim Wills wrote:I'm finding it hysterical and curious that this thread was started 9 years ago and no one commented until now!!

They are still holding onto the same pen waiting for it to run out!

Pens usually last a long long time for me. I carry one every day in my breast pocket and when I take all of the things out of my pockets at night, they go into my hat with my belt. First thing in the morning, the belt goes on and all of the contents of my hat return to their rightful place in a new pair of clothes. I usually order a 3 pack of refills for my pen every other Christmas, along with a new canvas watch band. If only I could get sunglasses to last that long without breaking or scratching so bad that you can't see out of them, I'd be doing great.

In late grade school and on into early college I used to get 2 pens a year.  They were chosen from counter gift pens for fine line and smooth writing.  When I got to college in Laramie going in and out of buildings in cold weather repeated apparently causes the ink to fountain out of the refill.  I started running click type space pens to quit ruining clothes figuring the added cost of the pen was worth the clothing it saved.  Then for work I kept breaking them in my pockets so after a number of years of thinking "this one will last or I will be more careful" etc I moved to the shorter bullet style.  Between being shorter in closed position and solid metal the pen in my pocket right now is over a decade old.  It was anodized purple on the outside with nickle or chrome plating next and finally brass core.  Nearly all of the anodizing is worn off and over half the plating layer under is worn away down to the brass layer.  Is is on its third refill.  Now if I expect to be doing meetings or be around people I typically carry a disposable pen to share too.  I have probably ruined at least one piece of clothing a year with the cheap ones but the space pen has never leaked.  I am on the third refill.

That sounds like a 'buy-it-for-life' pen C. (and definitely not one to lose)!
Was it one like this?


fisher space pen

Nancy Reading wrote:That sounds like a 'buy-it-for-life' pen C. (and definitely not one to lose)!
Was it one like this?


fisher space pen

Yes, that is it.  Mine was purple on the outside and has a pocket clip on it.  In closed form it is only 3 3/4" long greatly reducing the length to break.  Being all metal but only that long I have never broken it in spite of having hit it really solid blows and having fallen with that hip hitting something else.  Attached is pictures of my poor tortured pen.  You can get refills in most of the common colors for them.

R. Ford wrote: If only I could get sunglasses to last that long without breaking or scratching so bad that you can't see out of them, I'd be doing great.

I can't help with breaking your sunglasses, but scratches can be avoided by getting a pack of phone screen protectors, cut them to shape carefully, and put them on the glasses. When they are damaged, replace. The thrift stores have packages of the phone screen things that people toss when they get a new phone.
I only protect the outside of my glasses, I don't usually get scratches on the inside. I'm less abusive to my reading glasses, so I don't have to protect them, but my sunglasses take a beating.

I'm weird about pens. I have some I like how they feel, some I like how they look. I lose them, but only within the house, so they show  up again. I am a dumpster diver and pick up things off the ground etc, and I tend to snag random pens. I take the ink parts out of cheap pens and make my pretty ones work again. I have some pens I have had going for 20+ years, just replacing bits as needed.

Terry Pratchett, Discworld book "The Fifth elephant" wrote: Suddenly the king was holding his mining axe again. “This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. Pretty good."

Pens are a thing in my world, they come and go and get new parts, but they are still my pens. And my desk still eats them. And they still go under my bed. And the cat steals them. But they come back and get tweaked again and go on to live longer. And they are still pretty good.   :D

Pearl Sutton wrote:I'm weird about pens. I have some I like how they feel, some I like how they look. I lose them, but only within the house, so they show  up again. I am a dumpster diver and pick up things off the ground etc, and I tend to snag random pens. I take the ink parts out of cheap pens and make my pretty ones work again. I have some pens I have had going for 20+ years, just replacing bits as needed.

Terry Pratchett, Discworld book "The Fifth elephant" wrote: Suddenly the king was holding his mining axe again. “This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. Pretty good."

 :D

Oooh! I never thought about mixing & matching pen parts! Thanks for opening up a whole new world for me! 😆

And about that quote you quoted: So.... if the axe got a new handle... and a new blade.... thennnnn... it's not the same axe, lol. How much time must go by between changing parts in order to feel it's the same tool? Then again, our cells replicate and we are the same person... wow, you've got me thinking all philosophically about pens and axes and people!

When I was working, over the years using those "disposable" plastic pens, only once did one actually run out of ink - that one was named, and came back from all corners of the office when that point was noticed.  
Had better luck with the steel model with replaceable ink thingies!

Jill Dyer wrote: that one was named, and came back from all corners of the office when that point was noticed.  

I have scissors with my name etched on them, and tools with my initials painted on them. Hubby tried the, "oh, you mean what's mine is yours and what's yours is yours," line on me, but I simply smiled and said, "I put things back!" (which is at least mostly true - we all screw up occasionally)

FYI - those cute little coloured paint jars with a brush included that some people call "nail polish" are great for putting a quick label on small tools and it seems to last quite a long time.

While I have often thought about how short a life most of my pens live, I have not thought about it quite this way.

As R pointed out, like many others, my pens are strictly short-lived objects.  I am trying to remember if I have ever run out of ink in a pen.  By far, the most common fate of most of my pens is that they disappear somewhere, perhaps into a parallel universe next to my socks that seem to get lost in the laundry.  But then I think I only use very cheap pens.  I wonder if my pens would last longer if I actually cared about them.  As it is, any one pen holds basically no importance to me other than that I can use it to write on paper.  If another comes along and serves that very same purpose, then the first loses all importance.  Such is the case when twenty pens come in a package for a low price.  

And to be clear, they are cheap quality too.  The writing style such as it flows from my hand is only so-so at best.  The pens take a fair amount of pressure to make a mark, contributing to my arthritis.  Many years ago as a beginning teacher I used a blue pen that, while mass-produced, wrote well, made a clear line and felt good in the hand.  I haven't seen those pens in some time.  (UPDATE:  I just found them on Amazon.  The are Uniball, 0.5 mm Micro Tip!).

Perhaps is the pens were of a decent quality, that felt good in the hand, wrote well without excessive pressure, and made a decent mark on the paper, I would aspire to keep track of where I put those pens.  Maybe then I would use them until they ran out of ink.  Maybe I would refill them.  Maybe like R, I would have the pen for 20 years, but until then, unfortunately I am contributing to the alternative used-pen universe--right next to the lost-sock universe!

My musings,

Eric

Kim Wills wrote:And about that quote you quoted: So.... if the axe got a new handle... and a new blade.... thennnnn... it's not the same axe, lol. How much time must go by between changing parts in order to feel it's the same tool? Then again, our cells replicate and we are the same person... wow, you've got me thinking all philosophically about pens and axes and people!

That's the Ship of Theseus/Theseus Paradox!!  There's a cool scene in Marvel's Wandavision about it.

So I use those Vis-a-Vis pens, because I can't see well enough for "regular" pens unless its under my CCTv.  Anyways so those do ware out, but I can make a small box of them last for years, so I'm glad of that.  I can't use the sharpies because I have to get my face right up on the paper so too much of that sharpy smell isn't a great idea.  And I can't really use old-fashioned home made ink quills because the ink doesn't dry quick enough and it would get all over my nose.  I don't use pens everyday but every few days or so I'm writing something short with one.

Its a good medium with which to explore disposability and making the best use of what we have before getting more.

I'm still on the same pen.

I still do a lot of writing.  But I am on my 6th bottle of ink.

fountain pens forever!

I am brand loyal to very few things. Profile Ball disposable pens is one. I have emptied many of these over the past 20 years. I have also lost about as many. This pen is easy to write with and the ball glides over the paper very smoothly. I am right handed. My guys are both left handed. I happen to know that some of those “lost” pens found a home in somebody else's hand. It writes smoothly for left handers too. So. One kind of pen for the household! I buy them in packages of twelve about once a year. If the store is out of them and I'm desperate, I might get the gel pens, but a smaller package, cause the ink stays wet for a few minutes. Smear city.

The other brand look a like is for shit.

Amazon link to support the Empire!

Comfy grip removed to prove that the left one ran out of ink!