This started as gushing about a $40 pencil

I never gave my pencils too much thought in school, grab a couple packs of numbers 2 for back to school and don’t think about it. Once I could make my own choices, I switched to ink pens and never looked back. I don’t remember ever taking notes in high school, college was all ink, and working prehospital for the 20 years like I did. Well, pencils don’t write through blood and ichor nearly well enough to write the vitals and meds I was going to forget if I didn’t write down. Ink pens were the things in my pocket next to my Maxwell’s that I lost on rounds or never really gave a second thought to and pencils were even less. They had become something for school kids in my mind. 

But now that I have some time to sit down and shut the hell up I’m going back to the things that gave me joy or the things that I never really thought were “me”. I’m taking naps, god help me, I’m drinking tea, I’m trying to get back into a healthy relationship with cycling that has nothing to do with IRONMAN or triathlons, and I am drawing more. Not well mind you, just more. I’ve written before about how I get distracted by the internet and the bright and shiny things on my laptop that keep me from writing or having the hot boy big lebowski vibes I’m trying to cultivate, so that leads me to a lot of analog work. Typewriters, writing my work long hand, and my visceral disgust at nearly anything AI, go together with the vibe and led me to these niche artisanal pencils.

I know what you’re thinking, “artisanal pencils? Okay hipster, keep working on the man bun” and look, I’m trying. These Blackwing pencils are fun though. Discontinued in the 90’s a few die hard fans bought all the machines to bring them back to life and they are sold as an art supply or an elite stationary item. The rumor is that vintage ones from the original era would cost you around $40 on ebay but they’re readily available now.

Richard Dreyfuss with a Blackwing in his Jaws from the movie, Jaws (1975) (https://chasewoolner.substack.com/p/lore-of-the-magic-pencils)

They write softly in a way that I can’t really describe to you through a written medium. More like drawing or writing with clay than the skillcraft number 2s that I remember from my grade school days. This isn’t an ad -unless you’re reading this and want to sponsor. Blackwing, hit me up- but their marketing is written around slowing down and that speaks to me. To disconnect from the constant connectedness that is life now and actually think about what you are working on without bouncing to the wider internet so be able to work deeply on something even though my stupid monkey brain convinces me that there’s something else to do on a different tab.

I think it came to a head for me after I moved back to the midwest where everything is convenience store based. These aren’t the mom and pop, borderline bodega stores that dot every road on Guam or the ubiquitous Lawsons that rule Japan. Those things are unique and original to what they are, slinging beetle nut and onigiri respectively, no this is the overly bright, mountain dew slinging Casey’s or corporate Love’s that don’t let the States have nice things like beetle nut and onigiri. They make things convenient to the point that there isn’t any friction, there isn’t even a chance to be bored before my phone is out of my pocket and I’m the one slinging slop into my brain. The problem is that boredom is where the creativity comes from. Even as I write this, google docs is trying to “correct” my voice and make me sound like the overly polite clanker that it writes as.

I’m not a Luddite, I use technology. My city is car centric and I have a smart phone, but I don’t like how technology wants to change me to it. My writing, my transportation, my pokemon, don’t all have to be the go type. A world that has lost all friction has also lost its creativity because inside of that friction and boredom is where your creativity lives. Slow down and in the world we live in today we have to mindfully hit the brakes since Casey’s and Wal-Mart have anything that you could need, slowing down lets you poke your head out and make a silly little doodle. That little doodle is something that AI will never be able to do, it links you to the people that painted on cave walls and all of humanity with it. Don’t give that thinking and beautifully human creation up to a machine in the name of convenience.