Scribe

Hello, my name is Simon, and I do drawings. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 47 of the erasable Podcast. Tonight's episode is sponsored by Metal Shop's Timber Twist Bullet Pencil. Now on Kickstarter. I'm on hosting duties tonight. I'm Andy Welfle, and tonight I'm joined by two guys I keep in the everyday carry of my heart, Johnny and Tim. Hey, guys.

I just read, actually just yesterday, about how Mary Shelley apparently carried her dead husband's heart around for 30 years before she died.

Yeah.

That's like the most Mary Shelley thing ever.

Just carry your face around.

How did. How did we get off on this?

Got weird real fast. Today we're going to talk about just how many notebooks we have going at a time. I think we need a little group therapy for Tim because he's the one who brought it up and says that he's on an edge.

He has a problem, so we'll talk through that. But first we should talk about tools of the trade. So, Tim, what are you drinking and writing with?

Excellent. Which. How is it hacked together?

Or what's it. What's. What's it made out of?

Yeah.

And is your Lagunitas from Petaluma, California, or is it from Chicago? Is that where the other one is?

I keep meaning to go up there and take the tour.

Yeah.

Cool. Johnny, how about you?

Vanilla Coke reminds me of spiced rum and Coke.

Yeah.

Which.

How do you feel about that paper with an unlined. Well, being unlined, I should say.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Well, I am drinking coffee because it is still kind of early, like, not quite afternoon yet. It's from Santa Cruz Roasting Company. It's a nice French roast. Drinking that black. And I just took a shot of Robitussin earlier because I still have a. I still have a pretty bad cough.

Yeah.

Shots of Robitussin. I do shots every night.

Yeah, Shots of Tussin. Make some scissorp. Yeah, I'm. Yeah. And I'm writing with a. I'm trying to give that grip 2001 from fabric Estelle. Another Chance after I kind of trashed it in the last episode. So I am writing with the all black version included, like the. The black dyed wood. And I'm actually writing on a index card from Notco, which is pretty good. What are they called? The. Yeah, that's what it's called. Which are, I think maybe my favorite index cards.

Yeah, really cool. Awesome. So should. We. Should. Should be launched into FreshPoints.

Tim, do you want to go first?

Yeah, that's what they seem like.

Eggshell.

That's cool.

I need to go digging for my set and break it out.

Yeah.

The Hestren Cook pencils sort of like perfectly embody, sort of like the San Francisco, like, hipster shop things for sale. And there's like. Like, even though, like, they're, you know, made by Musgrave that, like, they're still pretty impressive. I don't know where else you can really get, like, brand new bridge pencils besides, like, I think Vera Wang makes

Kate Spade. That's who it is.

Yeah.

So they. They must have had, like, some. Some poll with Musgrave. I guess Shelbyville's not that far from.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. So yeah, they. They got some bridge pencils made, which are pretty cool.

We should do some APCs pencils with bridge pencils. That'd be fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Tim, continue. If you went to school.

Yeah.

Should we go through kind of the ones we were thinking so. So we don't get a lot of overlap or should we let people bring that up organically?

I think I have your list here

So the General supreme, the General's Badger, The General's Pacific 365 Generals has a

General Semi Hex. But also the Musgrave Harvest, which is an interesting one.

The Karan Dash yellow school pencil and then the. The Tombow 2558H HB.

Yeah.

I was.

I was awesome. Yeah, I was. I was thinking about that too. Even though there's a lot of like just as much black as there is yellow on it. But at the same time like kind of the traditional like American school pencil probably has an eraser on the end of it and I guess they do have Norris's with erasers on the end. So I don't know if we want.

Qualify it by, you know, qualified even further. Like it should have an eraser. It should be kind of old timey looking.

Yeah.

But if we do this in time we could do a March Madness brackets.

Johnny, how about you? Do you have any fresh?

Yay.

As in a horse, not a pencil?

Because they eat like, a horse.

Huh.

What's his preferred eraser?

Yeah.

Yeah, the. I actually kind of like the Moleskine Chapters books. Like, they come in really interesting shapes.

I. I think that they're kind of like. Yeah, the. The Moleskine kind of like modular system, like, Midori stuff. I don't know if they have. I don't think there's some sort of, like, a bigger, like, thing that you bind it in.

And then I think they also have like basically chapters within those notebooks where it's like a three subject, you know, notebook or something like that.

They have one that's the size of like a checkbook. That seems like a really nice size. And they're kind of like this fresh purpley color. Moleskine has had a few good things. Like, I really like. They have these fabric covered notebooks now.

Yeah, my fabric covered confidant is definitely aging. Numerous coffee and water spills on the COVID Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a couple things, one I wanted to mention. Just kind of getting out of the way up front. So we are recording this podcast a week early. So by the time you're listening to this. We recorded this a week ago. And part of it is because I'm going to be traveling and I don't know what my access to like a really good Internet connection will be because, you know, England's a pretty third world country. But really? Yeah, I just couldn't think of like a good time to do it because also I'll be offset so much in the time zone. So the irony is that by the time this episode releases, we'll probably know what the new field notes edition and probably the Blackwing volumes will be.

Not for Blackwing. I guess the only hint that came for the field notes was those stamps with the birds on it. Somebody had a really good guess, like a really interesting guess that there might be like a, like a cover with the impregnated. Like impregnated with seeds. So you could actually plant the COVID and grow a little garden. That'd be super cool.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a biodegradable plastic wrap. So it eventually just disappears and then. Then your notebooks just have sprouts growing off of.

That would be awesome. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. I don't know if we can do a little mini segment if we find the time and if it all happens, but that would be awesome.

We'll talk about it before we release. The other thing I wanted to mention is on Friday. So three days ago, I went to two days ago. I don't. I don't have time for days. Aaron Draplin came down from Portland to San Francisco and had an art show at the Mule Design Gallery. Mule is like a. Like a pretty prominent, like, design firm in San Francisco. Mike Montero, who's the. The owner, he's pretty well known on the Internet and, like, the tech world. They're friends. Draplin came and attended, kind of held like, a gallery art show with all of his state posters, all of his thick lines and shuttle posters and a bunch of, like, little, like, gig posters that we may never have seen. Super cool. It was really great to see. It's also really, really crowded, so it was. I actually did not see them all because there were so many people and there was a line out the door for the merch table the entire time. So I told a couple people I was going to try to pick some things up for them. And I could not even get to the merch table because it was just like, packed. Yeah. And I saw Draplin a little bit. He sort of, like, emerged out of nowhere and gave me a big hug and was like, Andy and the people I was with were just pretty sure they think I'm a rock star now. So obviously that's the whole point.

Yeah, that'd be cool. He has some interesting thoughts about pencils. I would love to hear him talk about it. Yeah, so that was lots of fun. And also the merch table, though, did not have any. I was hoping to find some dead prints or something there, but I wonder if he just, like, has completely sold out of them because they didn't have anything at the field notes. They didn't have any field notes at the merch table. That is. Are not something you can buy with whenever from the field notes store. So it's a little disappointing, but I guess I Understand that somebody picked up a patch. Barry Nothstein from the field notes group got a really cool field notes patch that I've never seen before.

Yeah. I was also going to mention the nuc code. Did you guys see the fishing vest label lapel pin?

So, you know. You know the. You know the kind of stereotype when you go to a pen show, there's, like, old guys in fishing vests there, which is a completely true stereotype.

Because there's lots of pockets that you can put pens and ink in, and

Well, like a bottle of ink, not like a handful of ink, but. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, it's. It's super true. Yeah, it's. It's a bunch of just, like, pens and ink shoved into, like, fishing vest pockets. They made a lapel pin for the event. Notco did. That's just of a fishing vest full of pens. It's pretty great. I. I think I'm resigned to the fact that I'm not gonna be able to go to the Atlanta Pen show, but I still want one of these lapel pins.

You should just stay down there, Tim.

You don't mind, do you? No.

So, yeah, it looks like there will not be any erasable presence at the Atlanta Pen Show. But we still need to have. We still need to have the pencil summit sometime.

Yeah, I think we'll find a place for that time and a place for Johnny's General Sherman outfit.

Yeah. So cool. Last thing I was gonna mention is that the Steinbeck World Tour Pencil Trio has reached me and Sipes Sentenon. I think the final leg of the journey eventually will be that it goes to Europe and England. But I think I'm gonna bring them with me to England and just kind of tool around London with the Steinbeck trio. I'm gonna try to make it to Monterey when I get back, but I probably won't in time to like, send it on in like a timely manner. So I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that, but.

I know. So I think we're gonna have to have a show and tell.

And John. John Fontaine will hunt us down like the dogs we are.

So, yeah, no, I. I really hope to see one of those.

What a. How thick? You have to like to polish those in order not to get it to splinter, because red cedar splinters pretty well.

Yeah, I think they should do like some of the exotic woods from the crayon dash pencils, like that blue zebra wood or whatever it's called. Be like a three hundred dollar twist pencil. Anyhow, that's all of my. All of my fresh points. Should we move on to the main topic?

So, yeah, Tim brought this up because it sounds like he has too many notebooks going at one time. I actually recall an episode of Pen Addict where they talk about this and they had a lot of really good, interesting feedback about kind of like the systems people use for this. And I think we're just interested in talking a little bit about, like, you know, how many, how many notebooks we have going, what we use them for, what the system is, and even, you know, what notebooks they are and what we, what we write in them with. So, Tim, do you kind of want to just start us out and tell us a little bit about your system, if indeed there is one?

So sprayed all over the place. That's a great way to describe it.

Your meta notebook.

Yeah, that's what I said.

So do you. Do you feel like things get random? Random, like memos kind of written in them because they're the most convenient to you? Like they're the ones.

Yeah.

So real quick, break down the number of like, like pocket notebooks to larger notebooks for me. How many pocket and how many, like, bigger ones do you.

Johnny, how about you?

Oh, the fabric covered one.

So he's the one who had the chrono decks, right?

It looks cool.

So are both of your notebooks pocket sized, Johnny?

Yeah.

Sure.

So I generally have two going at once, but I should preface this by saying that I'm still, like, super cluttered, and I have. Often I'll just write things on, like, random scraps of paper that are laying around. So this kind of. The thing I'm writing on right now is a good example of that. I'm writing on this note card because it was sitting on my desk, because I at one other point used it. I found it somewhere else, and I wrote down Jerry's address from it when we did our pencil trade, Jerry being a member of our group. And so I. I just turned it over and started writing on the back of this to record, like, the timestamps and some of the freshpoint stuff we're talking about. So. So I do have, like, random scraps of paper that just Lay around that I write things on that I eventually just throw away. But generally I have two. I have a confidant that I use at work as general, like to do list stuff and then also meeting notes. I'm trying really hard not to take meeting notes on my computer when I'm at work. And then just a to do list that I kind of trade off between the notebook and my app that I use on the computer for to do lists. So I have that. And then I always have a pocket notebook that I generally use for personal things or random notes. I do a lot of, like, show notes and episode planning stuff for this as I think of it. So those are the two that I have going. What's. What's weird? And I haven't quite figured out why this is with me. When I hear Johnny say, like, he goes through a pocket notebook once, like, like a week or less. That's just crazy to me because it sometimes takes me a month or a month and a half to go through a pocket notebook, maybe sometimes more. And I don't know why. I just write like, I go through them slowly and I think I write small and I think I write like, condensed. I need a. I think we should post, like, samples from our. Our notebooks so we can. I just want to see how Johnny writes.

I know that you. So I'm just trying to figure out. Yeah. Why I go through so slowly because it is. It is hard to, like, commit to a pocket notebook because I just get so many of them. It is hard to commit to that for, like, as long as I do.

Yeah.

And that's. Yeah, that's what I try to do. But I use it a lot and I still don't feel like I use it. Maybe what I should do is just like, never use scrap paper that I find laying around. Just always use my notebook.

Yeah. So I started this confidant probably in like November, December, October, November of last year. And I'm not even halfway through it yet. So I just got through it so slowly. That usually works pretty well for me. But what I usually try to do is if I'm like, reviewing a notebook or just trying it out, I'll Fill up the last page of the notebook with my various marks. That way, like, I can start a new notebook and still have it, like, feel fresh. And then I feel like I never get to the end of Notebook. So I'm actually almost done with the Shenandoah that I'm using. So I think I'm gonna try to hold out until the next edition comes and start using that.

Right? Are they sold out?

Let me look on their website.

That's awesome.

Yeah, they're. They're sold out, man.

Yeah, Tournament of Books. Yeah, that's the. I. I don't remember why they do that with the rooster on it.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're crazy.

Well, I guess I have two stories then. Or two questions for you then, Tim. The first one is, if let's say you were just to have one notebook, how fast do you think you would fill it up?

Yeah. So the writing one presumably would go pretty fast.

Because I was thinking about one of those multi subject notebooks but then how that wouldn't work would be then if you were to like go through them at like rapidly different paces.

So yeah. And it sounds like maybe this would

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or even I'm trying to think of a good example, like something with the modular systems. Like kind of like a Franklin Covey, but not like crappy. Like in my opinion, Franklin Coveys are. I know there's a lot of. I doubt that there are a lot of Franklin Covey enthusiasts who listen to this, but at least I would hope not. Well, they have, like, Levenger has that, like, circulo system or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Staples has one, don't they? Yeah, Staples has one. There's. There's a. There was a Kickstarter for, like, these really interesting, like, magnetic sheets that you can.

I don't know. I hope so.

But also probably, like, rapidly overpriced or rapidly way over.

I took a shot of Rotosm. I have no. I have no words left. But the trouble with all that is, like, it's kind of hard to be in a situation that you're in where you have a podcast about, like, pencils and notebooks and want to try out all these different notebooks because you're kind of shoehorned into a system.

So maybe that should be a qualifier of. Whatever you go with is like, it needs to be notebook agnostic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are you talking about? Index Inc. Yeah.

I can't remember who put it together. One of the field nuts actually did it. But it's. It's basically a website where you can upload and reference your various pages from your pocket notebooks.

It's. Yeah.

Totally talked about on this show before.

IndXD.in indexed so many episodes.

Yeah. It's N d. What? It's index.in yeah. David Ray Rea, who is a field notes member, he did it.

It's. It's. It's probably not as sophisticated as. Probably, like, what? Evernote does. Because I don't believe it has, like, a, you know, shiny new, like. Like a handwriting recognition system in it, but it is, like, specifically made for pocket notebooks, like, to be. To be indexed.

Yeah, take a look at that. It's like, it's been around for a couple years now. Maybe, maybe just. I don't remember when it came out.

I've created an account just to take a look, but I have not yet actually used it. I need to. And again, I go through my notebook so slowly that I just don't have the volume of stuff that needs to be indexed. But it would be useful. Yeah,

Yeah, it's. Yeah. And he's a. He's like a field nut. Like a field notes fan. And so they use field notes as sort of the default, I think, in here.

Yeah.

No worries.

Yeah.

When I used to wireframe, like, webpage layouts, a lot more in My old job, I used my pocket notebooks for that and it was great. But I barely ever draw anymore, so I'm. At one point in my. My youth, I wanted to be a cartoonist.

Yeah. Then I realized just how crappy I was. I'm a drawer.

Hello, my name is Simon and I like to do drawings.

Yeah.

what if you lose it?

Yeah.

You keep it in the designer asshole pocket, which is what Draplin calls it.

Yeah, I think I do.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome. What were you gonna say, Tim?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool.

Yay. Solutioneering. I'd be interested in just kind of hearing some of our listeners notebook usage and setup. I know that there's people who have a very complicated system that they just stick to. I should find that episode of Pen Addict and just link to that so we can listen to some of it. Some people have these. Yeah. I think we even talked about the Leuchtturm Big Book.

That master notebook. Somebody. Somebody use. Uses that for. In a very specific way. That's just, like, fascinating.

Yeah.

I'm really interested in your system of, like, you know, notebooking from, like, you know, from both sides. That's really interesting.

Yeah. What did you call it, Johnny?

Do you want to give your Nietzsche quote about all this, Johnny, that you put in?

That is the most Nietzsche thing that. Or that actually a little bit. Also sounds like Thoreau.

Yeah, yeah.

If you need a system to organize your thoughts, then you're no better off than the animals.

Yeah, you're writing it down not to remember it later, but to remember it now.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Johnny, can I ask, when you. When you like, do you journal daily?

What kind of journaling do you usually do? Do you, like, write it? Write down, like, what you did throughout the day, or do you write down thoughts or what?

Yeah.

Badmouth your co hosts.

that I won't tell you guys.

Exactly.

Do you like how, like, what volume of things do you write? Usually every day. Ish.

Yeah.

Do you usually do it in the evening or in the morning?

Nine Inch Nails, Daddy. Nine Inch Nails.

Yeah, I. I've been trying to do. To do sort of a morning pages thing, but actually I've been using the app Day one for this on my computer, which I know is. Yeah, not it. It's antithetical to what I'm here on this podcast talking about, but I. I set it like a little reminder to myself to like, every morning when I get to work and I have time to go get my coffee. So like 8:45ish, I have a little reminder to come up and say, oh, hey, like, journal for 10 minutes. And I try doing it. Some days I'm just completely brain dead or I just like, can't think of anything. My brain is empty. But yeah, it's a. It's something I'm trying to get better at. And I feel like I did it for a long time in paper notebooks. That worked out really well. And then I stopped being able to do that and I switched to day one. But I'm sort of feeling a little bit like switching back to paper again, which is frustrating because then I don't have like one good source of truth for like, my. My brain at that time. That time.

Yeah, I did it when there were like, really big, rapid changes happening in my life, like when I, you know, interviewed at Facebook and when I did like a couple things like that, I definitely, like, wrote down a bunch of stuff. And I try to. When I'm traveling.

Like when I was in New York and I saw everybody, I tried to like get all that down just so I can remember it.

Yeah, man. I like filled up a hard drive with that.

Still, I have this empty hard drive here for when I finally meet Tim.

So I have like. So I feel like I just definitely do it in waves. But I would love to be somebody who can just like form a habit out of it. So I will always do it. But I have not been able to do that successfully so far.

Well, should we button this up so you can go get some of the Mac and cheese, please?

Screw you guys. Get some Mac and cheese.

Johnny, where can people find you on the Internet?

one of his many, many notebooks.

I am Andy Wellfli. You can find me on Twitter at awealthly A W E L F L E or oodclinched if you want to see just pencil stuff. And you can see my blog, which has not been updated for a long while@woodclinched.com and we collectively are the Erasable Podcast. You can find us online@ erasable us. This is episode 47. So the show notes for this episode and the recording is@ erasable US 47. Please, please, if you are not already, come join our Facebook group. It is an amazing community. I have a feeling that long after this podcast has gone, this group will still stay around in some form or fashion that is@facebook.com groups erasable. It's also the best place to go if you want to find out about listening to live streams of and then chatting along with this podcast, which we did not do for this episode but we will do for most episodes we are if you want to hear the official voice of Erasable on Facebook, we're@facebook.com erasablepodcast and on Twitter and Instagram both as erasablepodcast come find us on itunes. Just search. I think if you just search Pencil podcast you'll get to us. But search for Erasable the itunes and the Android play directories for podcasts. If you use Overcast or any of those, any podcaster app, please recommend us. It helps us become more visible to our listeners to find new listeners and that's it. So thank you guys for joining me and we will talk to you all next time.

I could just count the time this has happened before.