with a vengeance, scratching out consistent letter forms, crossing my capital J’s, and hooking my lowercase y’s and g’s.  And to top it all off, someone recently commented on how they liked my handwriting.

Seeking the perfect pen

For my entire first Miquelrius, I had found the perfect pen, one that went hand-in-hand with the book. The uni-ball Vision Elite, black, 0.55mm Micro. It was super smooth, never skipped, and never blobbed up. And when the ink ran out? The line got a wee bit narrower, and I tossed it for another one. I’m one of those strange people who uses a pen until it runs out of ink.

However, much to my disappointment, the uni-ball choked in a big way with my second Miquelrius. I even bought a third notebook, just to see if it was an awful coincidence of events. But no, instead I found myself faced with big, blotchy lines and stop-dots wherever I paused the pen. They would bleed through to the other side of the page, and just for giggles, sometimes the tip would catch somehow

on the texture of the paper and grab mid-stroke, tearing away part of the top layer of the paper.

As it turns out, I was staying at the Elan Hotel in Beverly Hills (for work, natch), and they had what I thought was a cigar humidor at the front desk. Instead, it was full of Tul gel retractable ballpoint pens, as part of some promotion to get people familiar with them. And, surprisingly, it seemed to be just what I was looking for. Nice narrow dark clean line, no bleed, and no skipping. Yum. Unfortunately, as the pen got to about 60% ink remaining, the line started to thin out a bit, so I eventually migrated back to the uni-ball, and have been having better luck lately.  Ah, the vagaries of an analog world.

An unexpected byproduct

But the strangest thing of all is that I’m finding that I have less and less need for any sort of organizational scheme.  I’ve found that the physical act of writing on paper - rather than pecking away on a keyboard or scribbling out something in Graffiti - actually helps me remember it much

better.  Instead of checking my Palm To-Do list dozens of times a day, I check my Miquelrius only three or four times a day.  The tactile sense of writing, the need to slow down and form the characters one by one, actually helps cement my thoughts much more clearly and permanently than other, more digital approaches.