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Back in fall of 2020 when the lockdown madness was heavy upon me, I started getting really into fountain pens. My initial gateway was the Pen Addict podcast by way of Cortex, but from there I found dozens of blogs on ink and pen reviews, the fountain pen subreddit, and a decently-sized collection of my own. I’ve always bought into the memory and processing benefits of handwriting; my last two years of college all of my class notes lived in either a “Dime Novel” Field Notes Notebook or a Moleskine “Classic Reporter Notebook” and it was a strange day without a Pilot Precise V5 in my pocket. I very much lived the Field Notes motto:
“I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
Lamy Al-Star & Traveler’s Co. Fountain Pen
Lamy AL-Star
And a few more…
Three filled notebooks later, work ramped up to such a degree that I felt compelled to digitize. In the fall of 2021 I went all-in on Obsidian, a fantastically nerdy approach to the note-taking problem. My usage has waxed and waned in the time since, but that tool remains my favorite place to write on a computer.
So where’s this post coming from?
Well, on one of the latest episodes of Cortex Myke and Grey were discussing the release of their new Sidekick Notepad and it reminded me of a product I picked up a while back: the Maruman Mnemosyne N162 Memo Pad. So I dug it out of my notebook box, inked up one of my Kaweco Sports and stuck it on my desk. It’s been in active use for a few days now!
Mnemosyne in action
I’m not sure yet how much I’ll use it or what role it will play in my day-to-day. But I can say with certainty that the alchemy of nib, ink, and paper still feels like magic and I’m happy to have it in my life again.
