2018 has been many things- for me, it has been a year of change. This blog has remained a constant in my ever-changing and evolving life. It is my touchstone. I return to it as a source of comfort, continuing self-expression and learning. I’ve been blogging so long that I cannot imagine my life without something of Comfortable Shoes Studio.
Thinking forward to 2019, I’ve been considering what I plan to do with this blog as I move forward with both my side hustle (this blog, writing, and my podcasts) and my professional life. Clearly, CSS will continue on. I’ve discussed some of my thoughts regarding reviews on RSVP and how they shape a blog. I hope that my honest reviews have helped you make informed decisions regarding your purchases and that has had a positive impact on your life.
As much as some might like to pretend that it’s just stationery, it’s not. The choices we make about stationery, the tools we use, adds to our life. When we take a mindful approach to these choices, and how we use our tools it has a positive impact on our lives. Sitting down with a pen or pencil that you love to hold and attending to how that tool feels as it glides and scrapes across a page is a deeply sensory experience, one that grounds us in the here and now. And at that moment as we allow our senses to take over and deeply feel that connection between ourselves and the page we are truly in the moment. This is at the core of mindfulness it is my belief that using this connection to our tools in a mindful manner can only add to our lives, never detract.
In the coming year, I hope to delve deeply into the affordable side of fountain pens. I’ve ordered a grouping of inexpensive pens to explore on the blog. One of the great things about the change instilled in my current DayJob is that I can safely test and explore the tools in my new surroundings. I hope to also explore more on the paper end of things. I’ve been looking at some of the notebook and journal options out there, and my hope is that I can review more notebooks and journals. My stance on ink reviews has generally been other people out there are better at them than I, but I’m hoping to expand into doing ink reviews but of specific colors and shades that I can use at work. I hope to explore these colors specifically in how they work for the DayJob.
I also hope to explore some of this tactile nature of the pens, pencils, and paper we use. What is it that causes me to like one ink over another? One paper over another? What are the specific tactile cues that I seek out? This endeavor will force me to be more mindful of my use and to also document these preferences.
This is less a roadmap but a listing of my hopes for the next year of Comfortable Shoes Studio.
(And of course I’ll be doing my yearly back to school sale composition book reviews!)