hello! it's seo from tbhstudying and today, i'm here to sit down and chat with you guys about the
stationery that's been on my wishlist for a while as well as the reasons why i'm not buying them. if
you don't know, i've been on a stationery no-buy for 2021, and i'm sticking very close to it! it's
been very hard, but i'm fighting the capitalist and the consumerist in me and not buying anything,
so i just wanted to sit down with you guys and go through some of the reasons why i choose not to
buy something and what goes in my thought process of what i want and why i'm not getting them
and yeah, i just thought it might be a fun video idea to do so let's go! i am referencing
jetpens primarily. i still haven't let myself unsubscribe from the jetpens newsletter
because i just want to vicariously live through the new arrivals on the jetpens website but it's
also really bad because it constantly tempts me so at some point, i should unsubscribe from it
but i haven't but anyways, i'm referencing jetpens for a lot of these items. i have it right here,
so let's go! the first thing on my list are a lot of pastel highlighters. i think
one of my main vices when it comes to stationery is highlighters. i love pastel highlighters, i
love trying them out, i'm always on the hunt for a good pastel highlighter that has good ink quality,
doesn't bleed through paper, and has a satisfying color range and after the zebra mildliners became
widely and massively popular, jetpens has been stocking a lot of different kinds of pastel
highlighters and although i've tried some of them, i have not tried all of them. the ones that i was
interested in specifically was the pentel fitline pastel highlighters, the staedtler textsurfer
pastel classics, the epoch kobaru sweet pastel highlighter -- these ones look super cool because
they're scented. they're SCENTED guys!! they look so good!! -- and then more colors of the staedtler
triplus textsurfers, which is a highlighter that i already have and love but i would love
to try some other colors in the range. so, why am i not buying it, you may ask? i love highlighters,
they bring me lots of joy to use, and i love using them, so in theory, i should be getting them,
but here's the thing. it takes me literally forever to get through highlighters. they take
forever to use up. i go through black gel pens so quickly but for highlighters, it feels like it
takes me a century to just get through half of the ink in one of them. and i'm an anthropology major,
i do readings all the time, i highlight obsessively, and i still haven't used up a
lot of the highlighters in my collection. because of that, i think it would be better for me to just
stay away from the highlighters and focus on what i currently have. and don't get me wrong! i do
like the ones that i'm using, it's just always tempting to get more, yknow, but that's why
i'm not getting these highlighters. it's so sad, it's so sad.... the next thing on my list [sigh]
are fountain pens. hear me out. i'm a gel pen girl, through and through. i'm not a big ballpoint
fan and i'm not a big rollerball fan. i tried the lamy safari once and i didn't really enjoy it but
something always brings me back to the fountain pen section on jetpens and it makes me think,
"oh, i could have a fountain pen, i could join the ranks of those dark academia aesthetic people on
instagram who use fountain pens, i could be one of them!" and some planner instagrams exclusively use
fountain pens with special bottled ink and take pretty pictures of all the pretty ink colors
and all the different nibs and all the cool barrels and i'm just like, i wanna be that.
i WANT to be that, i want to HAVE that, but the truth is, i'm just not a fountain pen user. i
tried the lamy safari and i hated it because the ink went everywhere, it bled through my
paper, the tip was really scratchy, i'm not really a fountain pen fan. but the TWSBI eco fountain pen
and the pilot iroshizuku inks... look so good... the inks look SO GOOD.... and also, another reason
why i enjoy the notion of fountain pens is the eco-friendly aspect of it. it would be so much
more environmentally friendly for me to re-use the same fountain pen and just refill the ink,
and the TWSBI eco pen has this cool piston mechanism that you can use to draw up ink directly
through the pen and just reuse it and in theory, it is so cool! it's environmentally friendly, it's
aesthetic, but it just doesn't fit my lifestyle and the kinds of pens that i prefer to use and
i know it would be a waste of my money to buy fountain pens and not use them. and in the end,
that's not even environmentally sustainable for me to buy something and to never use it. that's just
a waste of my money and a waste of materials and a waste of emissions from shipping, so again, i
have to resist the urge to get fountain pens. if anyone's a fountain pen user out there,
i'm so jealous of you. you're so powerful. but i just can't do it, i just can't live
the fountain pen life. ooooh, this next one!!! i mentioned that i go through black gel pens
very quickly, which makes it very tempting for me to get more. so the ones that i was looking
at on the jetpens website was the iconic un jour de reve .... pen? i'm so sorry if
you speak french because i totally butchered that, but anyways! the iconic pen in 0.38 mm and also
i saw that zebra sarasa released a new gel pen called the R gel pen and there's a black version
in 0.4 mm and there's also the uniball one gel pen in 0.38 mm and they're very tempting. so
tempting.... because in theory, i would use it up! i use pens like no one else! well,
specifically, black gel pens. i use them up very quickly as a college student who
constantly uses them to write but they're just so tempting to get. here's the thing:
i know what kind of pens i like. i like the zebra sarasa refills, you know, the 0.5 mm generic
japanese kind, those are the ones i like! those are the ones that i consistently come back to.
it would be a lot better and a lot more economical for me to just buy the refills that i know i'm
going to like and that i know i'm going to use up rather than to try new kinds of pens that i
might not like and i might not use up. a great example of this is the hi tec c needlepoint pen.
so, i bought this pen before i realized i really hate needlepoint pens but everyone was raving
about them. apparently the hi tec c pen was super good for taking notes and had a really smooth ink
flow but i hated it. it was so scratchy, and i hated using it, and i ended up giving it away. i
didn't even use it up! so, my worry for these pens is that i might not like them and i might not use
them up and i'm left with pens that i don't need and it recreates the same exact problem that led
me to start a no-buy in the first place. so that's why i'm not getting them! although, when my no-buy
is over, i am tempted to get the zebra sarasa R gel pens because i know that i like what zebra
sarasa produces and i consistently like their products so i might get that one? or i might not?
stay tuned on that one. this next one is kinda silly. it's the papermate inkjoy gel pen in 0.5 mm
and hear me out, hear me out. this is a pen that i've already tried before and i know that i like
the 0.5 version but i liked it literally four years ago. this is a pen that i discovered in
high school and at the time, i really enjoyed them and thought they were comparable to my current
favorites at that time which was the pentel energel. but the 0.5 mm, i remember them being
so good so i want to repurchase this just to see if it's as good as i remember it being
but like, i've already tried it. i've already used it up. i know what the experience is going
to be like and i know that i'm probably just going to go back to using the zebra sarasas
anyways because that's my current favorite. so why do i want to get it again? i don't know,
i really don't know, like, i know what it's going to be like but for some reason i think
it's going to be different. i think it's going to be totally different from what i
experienced four years ago and that makes me curious enough to want to try it out
which is a silly idea and a silly reason for wanting to repurchase them,
especially when i'm on a no-buy. so, those are my thoughts behind the papermate inkjoy.
and then, the zebra bLen ballpoint pen. this is a pen that i already have in a multi-pen version. i
think i featured it a while ago on my channel and i got it in PR and it was a beautiful experience.
i normally hate ballpoint pens because i feel like my handwriting looks very odd in them and i find
that i have to apply a lot more pressure to get the same kind of color payoff on a ballpoint pen
than i do with a gel pen, so in general, i'm not a ballpoint fan. however, the zebra bLen is one
of the few ballpoint ink formulas that i genuinely enjoy using. i'm using the bLen pen right now in
lab because i prefer using ballpoint pens in lab because if you spill water on them, it doesn't
go as smeary or smudgy as gel pens do and trust me, i know from experience. i totally spilled
a test tube of buffer on my protocol which was covered with notes in gel pen on it
and it just bled everywhere. i couldn't read what i had written and i couldn't read the
instructions anymore so i had to print out a new one and re-write all of my protocol notes on it in
ballpoint pen so that next time, if i spilled something, the ink wouldn't smear, so i know
that i would enjoy the pen. however, the only place where i would decently use ballpoint pens
is in lab and i already have my bLen multi-pen for lab, so why do i want another bLen pen?
and the easy answer to that is that they have different colors of the barrels, like, they
have this pretty pastel purple and pastel pink barrel for the bLen pen and it's soooooo cute!
but i would only ever use it in lab! and maybe on the few occasions that i decide,
"oh, i'm not going to use a gel pen today" which is like, almost never. it's one of those purchases
that would be like, in theory, i would like it, but in practice, i really wouldn't use it up,
if you know what i mean. and the last thing on my stationery wishlist is kind of a broad
category rather than a specific brand. it's korean stickers. i don't know if you've been on korean
journaling instagram but i sure have, and it looks so cute. they have confetti-style stickers,
they have these really cute bear stickers, there are like these ribbons and little bow stickers and
oh, it's just so cute! i'll put up some examples up on the screen if i can find them, but they are
so cute! i looked on a website called 10x10 and i've also looked on artbox -- artbox is a
stationery store in korea and 10x10 is a korean online shopping retail site -- and it looks so
good! it looks SO good! however, the reason why i'm not buying these stickers is well,
1. i'm on a no-buy, but 2. the shipping cost to the US is exorbitant. it's crazy, it's wild.
a sticker sheet that costs $3 would cost like $20 to ship to the US for one sticker sheet alone!
don't get me wrong, i would love to support local korean artists and support small
stationery shops in korea but i can't pay for that shipping. i'm POOR. i'm an FLI student
at a predominantly white institution that takes so much of my money from tuition. i can't pay for
that! so every time i see korean journalists or people ordering korean stickers or doing a
group order or a group buy for stickers, i want to join in but the shipping cost is just too
high for me to justify getting a few stickers. so, that's the last thing on my list. i hope
this was entertaining or informative in some way but either way, thank you so much for watching,
i hope you enjoyed the video and i will see you in the next one. bye!