Why does nobody talk about how much a good pen actually matters?

I spent $45 on a single Pilot Custom 74 fountain pen after my cheap $3 ones kept bleeding through my journal pages. It sounds ridiculous to spend that on a pen, but my spreads actually look decent now and I don't hate looking at them. Has anyone else found a single tool that made bullet journaling way less frustrating?

3 comments

3 Comments

webb.ben23d ago

I bought a $60 mechanical pencil for sketching and suddenly my drawings actually looked like what I wanted them to lol. Its weird how we'll spend hours on a hobby but cheap out on the one thing we actually touch the whole time.

blair59723d ago

Man, that's so true. It's like people will drop a ton of cash on fancy coffee or a new phone case but then use the worst possible tool for their hobby. I've seen it with everything from cooking to gaming. You'll see someone spend hours prepping a meal with a dull $10 knife or try to play a competitive game on a laggy laptop. Its like we think the skill alone will make up for bad gear, but sometimes the tool is what lets the skill actually show up.

alice_hart18d ago

Wait, is a $10 knife really that bad though? I mean yeah a dull knife sucks but people act like you need a $200 chef's knife to cook a decent meal. I've prepped whole dinners with a $10 Victorinox that was sharpened right and it worked perfectly fine. It's more about knowing how to use the tool than the price tag. Same with gaming laptops - some cheap ones can run games okay if you tweak the settings right. Not saying people shouldn't invest in good gear, but I think we sometimes confuse "expensive" with "actually useful." A $60 pencil is great if you draw every day, but someone starting out could buy a $10 set that works just as well until they know what they really need.