Thx!
Libb
joined 2 years ago
Trying to revitalize !journaling@sh.itjust.works. So far, after maybe 3 weeks regularly posting stuff, I'm still the sole poster but members have started commenting which is already great and very encouraging. I've also noticed a few new subscribers joining the community, at least 10 (I forgot to note the initial number so it's probably a little more than that), which I find very encouraging too.
That being said, I have zero idea what I'm doing (and how well), I just want to try. I asked for the community 'lead' (is that how I should say?) because, well, it had been inactive for a year or so. And because no one else asked for it. And because as a lifelong journaler myself I know how useful (and so much more than that) keeping a journal is. It was so sad to see it not moving at all, I wanted to give the community a chance to grow and become more active.
I've discovered Fedigrow this very morning and it feels like it's exactly the place I didn't now I urgently needed to find. I've started reading a few discussions and already grabbed a few cool ideas. Thx :)
Congrats, and a warm welcome to the FOMO-less club and to the omfg-had-no-idea-I-had-so-much-time-to-do-stuff club ;)
Imho, the most important tool/help anyone can get is to find other but as exciting stuff to do then to stare a the screen (phone or otherwise). For me, it was taking long walks (it also helped a lot put me back into batter physical shape), hobbies (like painting, scale models, music,...), or activities one enjoys and that don't require the use of a screen. Cooking, writing, sketching, DIY, craft,...
The second most important tool would be to not hate yourself if/when you will fail. Try not to fail, obviously, but when it happens instead of hate and shame and anger (any impression this could be based on personal experience would be a pure 100% coincidence, this goes without saying) try to understand how and why you failed. So, you will be better prepared next time.
Edit like you mentioned, the support of your SO is a huge help too. My spouse was amazing in helping me get over my own addictions (not phone related, but addictions nonetheless).
I think DeAtramentis is too dry
It is dry, I don't mind it. That said, like you, my favorite in permanent ink is Platinum Black (I would love if they had something in brown too, though) ;)
The DeAtramentis Document does smudge though
I would say it depends a lot on the paper. On thick and on smooth paper, I have a harder time with Platinum black but I'm not afraid to use either with watercolors after a few minutes.
Can you buy Lamy stuff over the counter in France?
Depends the shop, but yep. For new pens and new nibs, I mean. For spare parts the rare times I need one I will reach directly to Lamy support. They're no the fastest but they're great.
Yes, Lamy is the workhorse of fountain pens, and I do like its build with a triangular finger rest and pop on cap. Super sturdy too!
Indeed.
They were designed to help German kids learn proper fountain pen handling. Hence the triangular finger rest and their sturdiness (and ease of repairability). Plus, they write well and I'm a sucker for bright colors... like kids, I suppose :P
Lamy gang :-)
Now we need an official Lamy gang tatoo :P
I prefer the ef nib & carbon black,
Carbon black is an amazing ink. I use it daily for note taking in my zettelkasten and for general writing. For sketching and writing in my journal I do prefer DeAtramentis Document Brown (btw, their 'Document' line is waterproof ink like Platinum Black just with more colors to chose from ;)) mostly because it's less contrasted... and, well, I like the color.
I noted that with an EF Preppy (which I like a lot) DeAtramentis Document ink was not flowing as well as Platinum Black (which is flawless). I have never noted that difference when using a Lamy Safari... but their nibs are always a tad wider, maybe that's why?
To anyone reading this discussion: it's worth knowing it's very simple to switch the nib on many fountain pens, but it's even more simple (and cheap) to do it on a Lamy Safari. So, you can easily experiment with various nibs, without purchasing a full pen each time (a new Lamy steel nib will cost around 8€, here in France)
Sounds tricky (and probably not doable on my Apple Pencil) but a really cool way to make it even more yours. I like that.
What follow is only suggestions based on my personal experience I want to share with you. Take whatever you might find helpful and safely ignore the rest.
I gotta move out first but like I said I already tried and failed
Failing is normal. I mean, it's impossible to do anything difficult without first failing at it. Multiple times.
Failing is how we all learned to walk, by falling over and over again on our padded butt as a toddler. That's how we learned to write too, by tracing clumsy letters that looked nothing like letters, and after that by making many, many mistakes when we learned grammar and spelling.
That's how we learn... anything. From wiping our ass clean to being a partner in love, from ironing a shirt to not feel like a failure when things don’t go as expected.
It’s like being paralyzed by the fear of life.
Alas, it looks to me like kids aren't taught to face failure anymore. Quite the opposite it’s like they’re being taught that things should be quick and that failing is a shame. It’s neither.
Hence so many of them being afraid to try stuff, and to take risks.
Normally I have lots of hobbies (...) I partly did all that when I wasn’t living with my parents.
Imho you need to get back into some hobbies, no matter what they are, quick. You need short term objectives and hobbies are excellent for that.
Is there anything I can do?
Get out of their house and away from them.
Long-term, this means getting a place of your own. But that’s long term and it will require a lot of work. So I would not focus my energy on that for the moment.
Much shorter term, you need to be out of the house, away from your parents, as often as you can, and to do it as quickly as you can. And for that you need nothing but your willingness to experiment various activities so you can find ones you enjoy doing outside.
You like jogging? Set your alarm clock an hours earlier, get up, shower, take a light breakfast and go out jogging. Come back. Do whatever you would usually do and then go out again, later the same day, to jog more. Do it like that every day for a week or two. And see how you feel.
If you fail jogging a day, that’s fine. Use that as an opportunity to better understand the reason you failed so it won’t happen for the same reason again. Be honest with yourself: like when I decided to lose weight it only started working the day I stopped lying to myself.
You find it boring to jog every single day? OK, give yourself some interesting destination. Go to the public library, go watch a movie, go to an expo, in a park…
But currently my state is paralyzing me and preventing me from doing any of that.
You really need to find stuff to do outside of your parent’s home.
If you feel like you can't go out because of your depression, it may help to focus on smaller/shorter-term objectives. These smaller objectives will help you feel better (but you will still fail don’t forget it, and that’s OK) and they will also help you get out of the house and reach you longer-term objectives. The more you manage to spend time out doing things you enjoy, the better you will feel (for me that would be going out for long walks, but that’s just me)
As a kid (I'm talking 8-10 year-old kid, I'm now 50+), I had a less than ideal relation with my parents, to put it mildly. I quickly realized it was less painful to live inside books and… in the outside world. So, when I was not reading some book, I used to go out all day long, and soon after that during evenings too. First, I would go to the public library to read more books but then, I started going out carrying my little toy film camera, randomly roaming the streets. I explored the whole city with nothing but that little camera and my shy 9 year-old smile and an absolute lack of worries about going to odd places and talking to perfect strangers (it could not be worse than at home). Also, back then kids were not raised to be as paranoid as today, and I can say that most of those strangers were OK-ish. What mattered to me was that I was away from home. I could breath and I was allowed to be… the real me, unlike at home. Also, even though I had my fair share of issues too, I was spending a lot of my time with people that helped me feel better. That was so much better than ruminating in my room.
(Incidentally, going out and snapping pictures it also helped me developed my photographic skills and pushed me to quickly learn how to earn money to... pay for more film, and a better camera)
The thing is that no matter how great it felt and how badly I wanted to keep doing that, I still screwed up things more than a few time and I failed people even more often. Sometimes, it was a real mess. If I told you how badly I screwed my first paid photographic gig! I was not 12 and I was supposed to help a photographer shoot a small local band concert. I was so proud! That was some 40+ years ago but I still vividly recall the shame and anger toward myself when the guy realized all the films were ruined because of clueless me. Of all the rolls, a single one was salvaged… the one I did not touch. That day, I also learned things that would help me for all my life… and to accept that I was not the best, even when I wanted it very much ;)
Sorry, it was long. Hopefully you may find something of use in all that.
I never felt the need to compare myself to others. aka, I'm competing with no one but myself.
I consider that a huge advantage, but who knows maybe I'm wrong.
You’re absolutely right about gripping a ballpoint pen. My solution was less than ideal for several reasons, but since the main reasons why I write are for the experience of doing so and because I commit things to memory much more easily when I jot them down and I don’t actually care about keeping and accessing my writings in a serviceable manner, it works for me. And it is effortless.
Yep, writing stuff down help so much with memory. At least, I find it invaluable on short-medium term memory. As far as I'm concerned, I often don't even need to read my notes to remember them but for the longer term memory I also know from experience I will need to re-write them from scratch, rephrasing them to make them truly permanent.
Hence, the importance of taking-notes when studying anything, be it at school or anywhere. Or when watching or listening to something. I will often take notes while listening to a podcast, even when on the go.
I write with a stylus on an Android tablet. Slight disassembly allows one to adjust the stylus’s sensitivity, which means you can press it as hardly or as softly as you like against the screen.
That's clever. Even though I don't own an Android tablet, I would like to know more about that disassembly part you mentioned :)
But I’m also the guy who buys the giant pack of 60 bic pens and tosses them all over the office because he can’t be bothered to keep up with a pen.
I know that. I have a drawer full of Bic packs, and I always carry 3 with me at any time (one 4-colors in the loophole of my agenda, another with whatever book I'm reading, plus a couple index cards for reading notes, and a spare third one in my bag). They're so practical and so cheap I don't mind losing one, or giving one away. BTW, the 4-color one it's just because the loophole is too wide for crystal Bic (I simply replaced all colors with blue refills ;)
I think that most people just don’t write so often anymore so it hurts a bit getting that endurance back up
That's very true.
I remember when I was in my early twenties I wrote so much and all the time (mostly longhand) I had grown a callosity on my finger where the pen would rest. Some 30+ years later it's still there, just less noticeable.
edit: Pilot are nice pen, btw
Thx for your feedback!
Do you still read the sticky thing in the sidebar? There should not be any sticky/pinned anywhere, post and no mention of them.
At first I thought it was just a bug with my machine... As it keep randomly displaying the old sidebar, no matter what I do. It happens to me once a day even though I regularly republish the new sidebar :/
Here is what the new sidebar is supposed to look like now: https://imgur.com/a/yQHy11U . I just checked, that's what I'm seeing right now (don't mind teh dark theme I use, I'm only referring to the text/links). Tell me if it's the old one you're still seeing.
Indeed :)