Ponder. It's a good word. And a good thing to do.

Many, many years ago, my college housemates gave me a fountain pen. It was solid, well-made, and elegant and spare in style. I loved it. But for a while, instant expedience became more important to me. My writing dreams, which the pen symbolized for the givers as well as for me, retreated further and further away as I focused on my workplace jobs, one after the other. The pen came with me wherever I moved, and I always knew where it was, from apartment to house to apartment to house. But I didn't use it. It was big to carry around, unsuited for scrawling at awkward angles in meetings and conferences, heavy to use when I was in a rush. And there was always the threat of leakage. (Although, to be sure, it leaked a whole lot less than the cheapie fountain pens I was so fond of in high school.) At any rate, it languished, loved but unused, for years.

However, my family has agreed that they will support me as I pursue writing full-time. As a result, the pace and quality of my life has changed radically. I write. That means I spend large amounts of time thinking. Stalking possibilites through a forest of paths, stopping and listening for snapping twigs to tell me where to go next. I have time to breathe, and to savor breathing, and to put deliberate care into what I do.

And so it was, a few weeks ago, that I got out my fountain pen and began to use it again. I'm predominantly using it in my journal, one of the incredibly trendy Moleskine notebooks -- a trendiness that crosses depressingly often into the realm of wankery -- but I have to say it's a damned good notebook. There are plenty of fan sites, like this one, and though most of them give the impression that they know just how wanky it is to so revere a notebook, there are a few that go a bit further than I would. Although I have to say that I do really love how the two -- the fountain pen and the obscenely expensive notebook -- feel when I'm writing. And because the aesthetics of it are so satisfying, I tend to use my journal more. Which encourages me to ponder. And pondering is a good thing for a writer to do. It's like blogging. Only not as wanky.