Pensive

I love pens.

I’m pretty big on the whole paper thing too, but it’s the pens that really make me spooge my pants.

The pen thing really kicked into gear when I was at University. I developed a system from quite early on that I maintained throughout the entirety of my Maths degree, and I still have my notes to prove it.

I would purchase, from the University stationery shop, a small number of blue Pilot G-1 0.7mm gel pens, a small number of red Pilot G-1 0.7mm gel pens, and a large quantity of black Pilot G-1 0.5mm gel pens. I used the red pens to write headings. I used the blue pens to write statements of theorems, corollaries, lemmas &c. I used the black pens (with the finer tip) to write the proofs of the aforementioned, and any further miscellaneous notes.

The end result was sheer brilliance. The notes were about as beautiful as you could get without going the whole hog and typesetting them.

I still have, in my pencil pot, one blue Pilot G-1 0.7mm gel pen, one red Pilot G-1 0.7mm gel pen, and one Pilot G-1 0.5mm gel pen. These are the last pens that I ever wrote with at University, and have not been used since then. Maybe they don’t work any more, but there’s not much ink left in them so I don’t feel that I’ve been unforgiveably wasteful.

Since then? Well, I’ve tried numerous other pens, but I’ve kept coming back to the black Pilot G-1 0.5mm. I bought a box of 12 back in 2002, which is nearly empty (yes, 5 years is a long time, but I’ve been using other pens in the meantime as well, you fool). But there is a tragic twist to our tale – obtaining Pilot G-1 0.5mm gel pens is not as easy as it once was, and I am having to deal with the sad fact that once this box is finished, it may no longer be practical to buy more. I’ve already invested a lot of hours into trying to find these pens at a reasonable price, but to no avail, and I think it’s time to cut my losses.

What kind of person gets so worked up over a pen? Sad loser types like me, that’s what.