Editing The Pen Addict 367/transcript (section)

== Guest Introduction ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, yes, yes, it is. But thanks for coming on. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I know we've talked about it a long time, and I'm glad I finally got off my rear end and got you scheduled.

'''David Parker:''' Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So what I want to do today is introduce you to all of our listeners and make sure that they know who you are and what you do and why you do what you do. And to kick things off, I want to know, how did you get started just in pens and stationery in general and then maybe on into fountain pens? You know, how did this whole thing start for you of, you know, wanting something cool to write with?

'''David Parker:''' You know, I think it started at work maybe around nine, ten years ago. I had a co-worker who one day kind of just showed me his Lamy All-Star and he said, check this out. I think you might like it. He really wasn't into pens, but he had an all-star and I thought it was kind of cool. And I'm a bit of a quirky guy who likes to be a bit different. So I went online to the site he told me about, which was JetPens, and I ordered myself an All-Star and some cartridges. And so for a long time, that's all I knew. I knew JetPens and that's where I went to go get my cartridges that I needed. And I liked it, but I really wasn't hooked. But about a year later, I was on a trip to Paris and we came across some safaris in a stationery store in the mall under the Louvre. And I picked up a safari. And then not long after that, I participated in a Reddit pen gift exchange. And someone gave me one of those Parker Urban sets that comes with a pen and a bottle of a black quink. And so I had those three pens for a number of years and I was happy. And then one day I kind of thought to myself, you know, like what other types of pens are out there? And that is a very dangerous question in hindsight. But I was clueless, though. I really had no idea what was going on. So I kind of began to search out the internet for any type of top 10 list that I could find or in your case, top five lists. And that I would, you know, I was like a lot of folks out there that just was confused about all the choices. And I didn't know what my tastes were. And spending $50 on a pen was borderline insane in my mind. And so I didn't want to make a mistake. And I figured that, you know, if a pen kept showing up on those lists, then the chance of it actually being good was pretty good. So I did tons of research and watched a bunch of video reviews and ended up picking up a Twisby Diamond 580 and thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. And then from that moment on, I was hooked.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So people that are familiar with your work will know where you have ended up since. But we got a ways to go to get there. But I got to rewind it right back to the beginning. Before your friend handed you the all-star, did you care about what you wrote with at work? Like, did it matter? Like, would you just grab whatever was available at the office or at home and just not really give any consideration to any pen or paper that you were using?

'''David Parker:''' I wouldn't as much. I kind of liked some of the, like the G2s, the Pilot G2s and things like that. And, but then it was like only if we had them in the supply closet or else I was grabbing whatever else. And I didn't care as much about paper. It was just any old notebook. And I didn't care much about it. But then it's one of those things to where at first, you know, I was into pens and started getting more into pens and kind of told myself, you know what? I'm really not into ink. I really don't see what's up with ink. And then all of a sudden I get into ink and then I fall into that. And then after a while, I'm like, you know what? I'm really not that into paper. I don't need to get into paper. Then eventually I got into paper. And, you know, you kind of, it's kind of a slippery slope that you end up going down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, for sure. For sure. So you mentioned your job and I got to ask, I'm not going to ask you, you know, what you do. We don't need to know that. But I need to know, do you take these pens and paper to work? And, you know, have you ever had any issues or have you had people say, hey, what is that? Or have you had a pen like vanish from your desk or anything like that?

'''David Parker:''' No, I haven't had any issues like that. Like when I was with in kind of my acquisition phase, you know, that phase where you're just buying things left and right and really excited about anything new. There was a few people in the office. I'd share my new things with probably too many people. I think they tolerated me barely, you know, and I've since paired that back a lot. I have a couple of folks I'll share with, but, you know, I do have two converts in the office. They're not really into pens. They're just using them. One uses a Safari and the other uses a TWSBI Diamond 580 that, you know, I don't think they're going to, I don't anticipate they're going to dive head into the hobby. But they at least have their own pens they enjoy using on a daily basis. I did have an incident, though, once where we had a candidate who was interviewing for a position with our company. And there were two of my coworkers who were doing the interview. And the candidate just happened to mention that he was into fountain pens. Now, I'm not quite sure how or why he mentioned this in the interview, but he did. And my coworkers literally stopped the interview and giddily ran down the hall to my office and grabbed me out of my office to bring me down to meet the dude. It was like they were giggling, like they couldn't believe there was two of us out there. And then it was like they were at the zoo watching two exotic wild animals, seeing how they'd react to each other when you, you know, put them both in the same cage.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that is a perfect description.

'''David Parker:''' And I just asked the candidate, I just said, oh, you into pens? I said, oh, well, what pen did you bring with him, bring with you today? And he said he didn't bring one, which I thought was kind of odd, because if you're going to profess to be such a fan of fountain pens that you actually bring it up in an interview, but you don't have one on you, that just kind of made me doubt his commitment to the hobby a bit. But my coworkers actually ended up hiring him. Unfortunately, he wasn't around for that long, but he did stay with the company for a little bit. But yes, they had to come grab me because they were just excited.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's another one. Just picture there. Yeah, there's another one. Hey, everybody, come watch. Yeah, come watch. Come watch these two talk. Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. So you've really ramped it up like in the past like five or six years or so. Did you have that type of personality where if like there's something that you love and you discover something new, do you just kind of go off the deep end like researching, collecting, figuring things out? Has this ever happened to you for anything else in your life?

'''David Parker:''' You know, I think in the past, like I'll, you know, I'll get into certain TV shows or something like that to where, you know, in the birth of the Internet, you kind of have online communities. And, you know, I'll go back to something like that, like the TV show Lost. I don't know if you watch that. And that was one of the first shows that had a huge online community. And you'd watch the show and then people would go online and theory craft for an entire week. And it was kind of back in the day when you had to wait a week for the next show to come out and things like that. And so I would get into those types of things, but I didn't necessarily have large collections or something like that as far as objects. But I, you know, I would kind of get into those types of things. You know, I don't necessarily have like an addictive personality, but I can kind of become, you know, obsessed with things at points in time.