I saw these pens when I went into Staples the other day and couldn’t resist. They were colourful and used the words “Extra Bold” on the packaging.

Plus, I’ve used the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner series of pens with success in the past. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with these. Unfortunately, these pens were somewhat of a letdown.

First, I didn’t much care for the grip or its location. I like the pens which allow me to grip close to the nib, and these did not. Plus, the (I assume, ergonomic) grooves were oddly placed and too narrow; maybe someone with small hands wouldn’t have a problem.

Next, the pen has issues both with posting the cap and recapping the pen. When posted, the cap wobbles and although it’s secured, it feels like it might fall off. Then recapping the pen can be a pain in the butt because it’s not actually recapped until you hear the click and getting to the click requires a bit of patience and strength…of course, the grip gets in the way.

But those detriments could be overlooked if the ink quality and flow were above par. Unfortunately, not the case. The pens need to be started on a scrap piece of paper, and as far as flow goes, sometimes the ink wants to flow too much, leaving splotches, and sometimes it wants to flow too little, stopping completely. Those splotches tend to be visible on the other side of the paper, and at worst, completely bleed through (especially black).

As far as the colours go, the black is nice and deep, and so is the blue. Surprisingly, I loved the richness of the red (I tend to like few red pens). I never much cared for teals, so I’m ambivalent about it here and I wish the green were a bit darker. Purple was bright without being overly bright. My main problems were with the orange and pink (which should be clear from the writing sample above)—both of those colors seemed washed out and far too pale.

The line thickness is nowhere near as bold as the packaging would have you believe. For me, it’s only slightly thicker than the line a medium point (0.7-0.8mm) pen would produce.

But these pens aren’t completely worthless. I had fun doodling with them, so they’d make great journaling and block writing pens.

Why would someone need a template for journaling? Okay, maybe it’s not that odd because some people do need prompts — what happened today and how did it make you feel? — to get going, but I wonder if those prompts are taking some of the organic creativity out of journaling. There were no places for doodling or gluing snippets from a great magazine article or anything like that.

Hmm, maybe I should create my own journal template for nurturing organic creativity. It would still contain the prompts — hello dear, tell me about your day – but it would go a step further by asking for images, clippings, music, or anything else that made that day what it was.

(This is a perfect example of me thinking out loud.)

Comb through each page of your journal and each time you come to one of these epiphanies (better known as life lessons), write it down on a sheet of paper. Get into the essence of that life lesson and note any patterns you find. If you continue coming across a particular lesson over and over again, then maybe you should be closer attention to it, because you continue repeating the same mistakes.

When your collection of epiphanies is complete, you’ll have an easy reference chart that you can use on a daily basis. Read through it often and see whether you’re about to start repeating mistakes which will lead to one of the life lessons you were supposed to have already learned.

Like anything else, journaling needs to be kept in moderation and perspective. It should never become a chore or a job or a task that needs to be completed. Journaling is about releasing and balance. When it becomes more than that, your journal is no longer being a good friend and it’s time to take a break.

In time, if it’s meant to be, you will be drawn back to your journal.