I spent the day getting bad news from my supervisor and then almost forgave him when I discovered he was both a pen addict and a Kickstarter addict.

It happened at the end of a meeting when my supervisor was scribbling notes with an unusual stylus ballpoint pen combo. It had a strange shape and I think was a digital pen from Anoto. Unfortunately, as soon as I expressed an interest in it, his pen addict paranoia took over and he spirited it away to a safe place so I never got a good look at it.

This brief glimpse, however, led to a discussion of various Kickstarter products he’d supported, and this led to a game of “you show me what you wasted money on I’ll show you mine”. I currently everyday carry five things I got via Kickstarter. This includes pen cases from Nock Co. and my new wallet.

I then tried to introduce him to Massdrop (registration required to look around) because he probably still has some money roaming around in his wallet that needs to be spent.

All this got me thinking about the ways we pen addicts spread our addiction. For example, my loaner pens are now a Tactile Turn Mover and a Tactile Turn Shaker. When I lent the Mover to a colleague a few days ago, he liked it so much he suddenly asked to see “my coolest pen” and I let him try my TWSBI 580 and my Karas Kustoms INK fountain pen. (The latter came from a Kickstarter campaign).

He didn’t seem as interested in those but he definitely liked the others.

This seems to be the most common way to spread the addiction: share the wealth, so to speak. I find that once people try the Tactile Turn pens, especially if they have the chance to use them extensively, and the see the different in quality between them and a basic ballpoint, they are suddenly interested in spending the money it takes to get the higher quality pens. Suddenly the expensive pens don’t seem that expensive. (For the record, My TT Mover came from Massdrop and I won the all titanium TT Shaker in a raffle.)

Then, once the addiction begins to take hold, they begin to think about fountain pens. Once that takes happens, I have a few names I’ll pass on to my friend.