My Daily Fountain Pens

I have two fountain pens that I consider as my daily carry: the Lamy 2000 and the Pilot Custom 823. Despite being a hardware engineer in the semiconductor industry (arguably the backbone of the tech industry), I have been using a notebook for the past year to organize my thoughts.

Initially, this was to escape the digital life. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and I noticed that digital tools spike it. I was looking for something intentionally slower. A fountain pen was the answer.

I have had fountain pens in school before and it was actually a relatively common talking point among friends. But I didn’t fully use it due to bad paper for tests - so I always had two gel pens handy. But my daily notes used a fountain pen. Once I had work and no longer had to use a pen, I initially discarded it but came back to it after two years.

Digital tools have been generally disappointing for me simply because they are not flexible enough while being simple. Think of a random A5 notebook with a grid/dot grid. You can write horizontally if you want. You can turn it 90 degrees for one page. You can do half and half. You can organize the space however you want. But it’s always simple and out of the way if you need it.

When I got back to fountain pens, I had a TWSBI 580ALR which I still have - but don’t use much anymore. The TWSBI Vac700R came next and I fully appreciated the vacuum filler as I travelled. I then bought a used Pilot Custom 742 which was surprisingly older than me and a Pilot Metropolitan in a Fine Steel nib.

Eventually, I made the plunge and bought a Pilot Custom 823 earlier this year. It was a combination of traits I really appreciated from the previous pens: High Ink Capacity (I write a lot), Vacuum filler (It’s fun), and a Gold Nib. The gold nib is not really a dealbreaker but I loved how soft it is. Steel isn’t a bad material no doubt about it but there’s something about gold that makes it really fun to use.

When I got back to Taiwan, I bought a Lamy 2000. The Pilot 823 is a grail pen for me but it is not really as suitable to Everyday Carry. It has a twist cap and generally catches people’s attention. A Lamy 2000 is still a great writer but I notice that my hand gets tired more easily compared to the 823. So it became my daily carry while the Pilot became my long-form writer.

Currently, both are inked with Iroshizuku inks. One is Shin Ryoku and the other is Ku-Jaku. And given my fountain pen hobby, I have a ton of notebooks but each has a dedicated purpose. Two are daily journals (morning/evening), one is my daily planner, and one is my commonplace book. I have a scratch notebook as well and a gym log but overall, these are the four I am guaranteed to use daily.

Slowness of analog is a feature especially with my GAD. Though in practice, it is not really that much slower. It allows me to be more present and focus on the moment. The non-infinite canvas allows me to focus on rephrasing stuff so I don’t have to write everything. It forces me to filter rather than “I’ll put it in just in case” which plagued my previous systems. Analog has forced me to filter which is overall a good thing. If a piece of knowledge is buried under 500 pieces of useless trivia, it isn’t useful.

Plus, given I cannot really search properly, I have gotten to maintaining a commonplace book for anything I want to remember. I realized that having good search isn’t a substitute to a library. I needed to curate anything I wanted to know about. It had to be curated because otherwise, it is useless.