#fucked

hipstre@diasp.org

An Example
An example of the kind of #bullshit I put myself through... I like to write in my #journal with one #pen at a time. The reason for this is odd. I like my pen. I grow attached to my pen. I want my pen to remain #pure. Here's how #weird I get about it. First, I'd like to buy one pen in the traditional way (the pen, the barrel, and the ink cartridge). And then my "dream" would be to buy ink cartridge refills so I can keep using the same pen over and over with new ink cartridges for years. Then… this happens: You buy ink cartridges, ten of them, and half way through the second one, someone comes out with a new, way better pen. Now you are #FUCKED. Even if that happens, I will discover that if you let an ink cartridge sit around unused for too long, it sort of freezes in place. So I will get three cartridges in and then the remaining seven are wasted. They don't work.

This is neither here nor there. I want to know how long my pen lasts, so I write:

PEN DEATH 2021/05/25 09:28

in my journal in red ink. And now that I am nearing that pen transition, I want to go back and find where I started that last pen and have the satisfaction of knowing that every single bit of very important information was written by that one pen from that date to this date. That pen's entire life is captured on page 228 of the last journal to page 91 of the new one. I can (and crazily, one day, will) count the number of words that pen wrote. I will agonize over things like: Does "2021/06/28 M 0541" count as three words? Five? I have no fucking idea. There is something about this that appeals to me.

The "thrill" is that most pens get used a few times and discarded or lost. This actually makes me angry. Most "trivial" objects in our lives are wasted. If I could somehow gather all that wasted pen potential and recycle it, I would be a billionaire. This is not a joke. There are billions of pens sold in the world every year, and most of their potential is wasted. So I get a thrill out of using an item like a pen or an eraser to its full potential. Because if everyone did this, we could take the excess capital and make sure everyone in the world had a home. Not a joke. If we didn't waste pens, erasers, and thousands of other things, we wouldn't be on a dying planet. But we do and we are.

Anyway, I couldn't find that PEN DEATH phrase in my journal because I hadn't transcribed it yet. But I had a scan. I didn't see it while flipping through the scan. That's okay, I thought. I will search through my old cash transaction records for the record of when I bought the pen, and I will know it was around that date. But I didn't have a sale with the hashtag #pen. That's okay, I thought. I can search for 'office'. But I didn't have it marked that way. I knew what store I bought it at. But I couldn't remember the name of the store. That's okay, I thought. I can find the store on google maps, and get its name (which I did "Plunkett's Office Supply") and search for that. I did. I found it. Now I had the date I bought the pen (2021/05/17) and I can search forward in my scans for the PEN DEATH. I did, and I found it.

Now I ask you: Am I insane? No. Everyone should be this fucking crazy.