Earlier today I was sharing my feelings about optimism and it being one lens to look through to view the world. Each of us make a choice about “reality”. We process a moment in time through our experiences and our current state of mind cataloging it for future interactions. Shared stories from others help us to further entrench ourselves in our beliefs and values. Even in listening to a story, we are interpreting it based on our own assumptions about reality and what the words mean.

A few years ago I met Marius Ducea at Chromatic Coffee. Afterwards reflecting on the time that I spent, I felt more enthusiastic about my work in the industry due to Marius being awesome and the mental engagement outside of the everyday. Marius has been a key DevOpsDays Silicon Valley organizer for years and community builder within the Chef and DevOps community. His insight into a variety of current and future technology was interesting and educational.

I purchased a set of 3 Uniball Jetstream RT 0.7 mm black ink in January of 2014. The first thing I noticed was the length of the pen was significantly shorter from the Safari that I’ve been using. It will take some time before I can tell whether this is actually a problem or just a difference. The ink definitely dries quickly. I can’t see how someone could smudge this unless the paper was somewhat wet already.

Lamy Safari Fountain Pen Back in April 2014 at Chef Conf, @isafarnik let me borrow his Lamy Safari. It flowed, was a great width for me in my hand and wrote nicely in my moleskin. I purchased the Lamy Safari Charcoal Fountain Pen (along with a second blue one) and it’s been my go to pen since then. I also have tried out different ink with the Lamy Safari Converter Z24 and Lamy Refills by Monteverde Rainbow Fountain Pen Cartridge.

A little over seven years ago I was starting a new job. At the time I was 3 years into a health journey and had a goal of doing 25 hikes in 1 year. In 2009, I hiked my longest single day hike of 14 miles across two parks. Over time being the single point of failure at work meant that I was not able to spend weekends hiking. Somewhere along the way, job stress combined with appendicitis and complications from surgery led to a state of low energy, high pain and not a lot of positive fueling activities.