Where is my pen?
“Can I borrow your pen for a moment?” I asked my colleague. It took him few minutes to search his backpack full of books, mp3 player, mobile phone, a thumb drive, music CDs, headphone and office ID card to find an old age Reynolds ballpoint pen. I needed to fill up a form manually and then I realized, ‘sheesh’, I could write faster on a key board.
Nowadays, I find it really difficult to find a pen when I need it badly. Moreover, I even find it difficult to write ‘traditionally’. It wasn’t the case seven years ago when I was a student, and a pen was one of my fundamental needs (food, water, shelter, clothing and a pen). I remember running back to my hostel during exam time to collect it. I was sure not to find one, even from my best of friends out there.
So what happened now? I was one of those persons who used to go out in the following manner:
- Pickup wallet and check money
- Pickup my favorite pen and put in shirt’s pocket to show my sincerity
- Pickup my bicycle’s keys and walkout
Now the sequence is different
- Pickup wallet and check credit cards
- Pickup mobile phone
- Pickup laptop
- Pickup keys and walkout
Where is the pen? “Well I don’t need it, and even if I do, I’ll find it somehow” I always answer to me.
I did a quick analysis of various scenarios where I always used pen and nowadays prefer to adopt alternate solutions
Scenario | Usage of Pen in earlier days | Alternates today |
Write exam | Must. 3-4 pens as backup | Last few exams were offline and I wrote it in word and .pdf |
Make notes in a meeting | Notepad/Diary | MS Word in my Laptop |
Send Update to friends | Letter, Post-It, Postcard | SMS, twitter, scrapbooks, message-walls, emails and so on |
Sending wishes | Greeting cards, letters | eGreeting, SMS |
Invitations | Writing name and addresses on cards | Email scanned invites, maintain spreadsheet and print labels |
Money Management | Maintaining personal ledger books. Write weekly expenses | Spreadsheets |
Banking | Sign cheques , pay-in slips, draft application details, cheque book request application, address change application | Credit card, debit card, net banking, phone banking |
Income Tax | Paper Form | eFiling of Income Tax |
Reminders | Paper Notes, Calendar appointment in diaries, to-do lists, check lists | Mobile reminders, email reminders |
Notes of daily events | Yearly diaries | Blogs and personal websites |
I have a very high regard for those who write on paper fluently, effortlessly and confidently. Which I feel is difficult to achieve in a digital world, where all your mistakes are being treated as an overlook and rectification is very easy.
Since more and more people are becoming part of the digital ecosystem, I really wonder what will be the future of handwriting analysts, calligraphy artists and all those associated with the written script on a physical sheet of paper. I also wonder, if a person like me who have lost the flair of usage of pen, could be analyzed on various parameters of handwriting to identify personality traits?
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