I love fountain pens! Absolutely adore them! When I write with fountain pens, I find that my words seems prettier, more stately. They were made for letters, notes, calling cards. I could easily see myself sitting at a secretary of a morning, replying to bits of mail. A few acceptances here, a few regretful declinations there, a congratulatory note to a friend. It’s why I am working to get back into letter- and note-writing to my friends and family. It’s a beautiful skill and habit to cultivate. I very much much enjoy what I see and feel when I write. I also love receiving letters in the mail that are not bills or something of that sort of dire importance to be taken care of. I also know that I am remembered and cared about.

Part of me – a large part – loves to see my mind poured out on paper. I love the evidence of my thoughts. I have told some that, a great deal of the time, I feel less than adequate mentally because my brain doesn’t move at the same pace as others’. It often takes me a long time to consider concepts and ideas before I can reach a conclusion or opinion about them, and there is no physical evidence of that process. So I fear that people often think I am not thinking or that I won’t think about things. When I write, the evidence of cognitive thought is there on paper. Proof that I do actually think!

I have been keeping journals since I was 17 years old and entering college. Most of them are leather-bound, golden-edged books that evoke thoughts of libraries and drawing rooms, of sunny parlors and crackling fires. I love to look back at them and see how my handwriting has evolved over the years and to take joy in the pages and pages that I have written about my life over the years. It also makes me realize just how much I need to invest in more notebooks to carry around with me. Always need something to write in, after all. Pen without paper isn’t quite as useful, you know?