{"id":15748,"date":"2025-09-17T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/?p=15748"},"modified":"2025-09-16T22:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:11:12","slug":"12-pen-person-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/12-pen-person-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Pen Person Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I learned about the 12 Pen Person Questions tag from The Well-Appointed Desk<\/a>‘s September 8 blog post<\/a>. In it, Ana linked to Olive Octopus’s original post<\/a>. I enjoyed answering their 17 Ink Questions<\/a>, so I’m answering these questions as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, on to the questions! I plan to write this more “stream of consciousness” style so that the answers are more genuine, since Lise (Olive Octopus) indicates a goal of answering these is to learn more about yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

1. If you consider the different ways you can engage with pens and stationery\u2014as a user, a collector, a hobbyist, a creator, a maker, a vendor\u2014which roles fit best and what percentage of 100% would you assign to each? Are you happy with the balance?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, I can eliminate two right off the bat; I’m neither a maker nor a vendor. Creator is more difficult. I don’t create stationery, but I create content related to it; does that count? Reading others’ posts, it certainly seems to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, as I think about this more, I suppose I am dipping my toes into the worlds of maker and vendor with my crocheted pen holder lanyards. But that’s a very small percentage of my engagement with the community, maybe 2% maker and 1% vendor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"First<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As much as I wish otherwise, I have to say hobbyist is a higher percentage than user. The two together are definitely over 50%. For a nice, even, number, I’ll mark them as 60% together. My initial thought is to put hobbyist at 40% and user at 20%, but that doesn’t feel right, so I’ll go with 35% and 25%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Second<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That leaves me with 37% of my interaction to divide between creator and collector. And that doesn’t feel right, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let me reset. What, exactly, is a hobbyist? The best definition I found was “a person who pursues an activity in their spare time for pleasure.” To me, that encompasses nearly<\/em> everything I do with stationery. I don’t get paid, in any way, for anything I do with stationery, except the new venture into selling the pen lanyards I make here and there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I consider that maker is 2% of my engagement with the stationery world and vendor is 1%, that leaves 97% as hobbyist to divide between collector, creator, and user. Creating and using are intrinsically linked, as a good portion of the time I’m using my stationery, I’m also creating. Which means that creating is the largest percentage of the three, by a significant margin; I’m calling it 60% of the 97%, or 58% of my total engagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"third<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This feels much more right, and leaves 39% of my engagement for collector and user. While I do collect some things, in most cases it’s with the intent to use. It’s only some stickers I collect for the sake of collecting. So, that should be a fairly low percentage. 5% feels too low, maybe 7%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"final<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This, this feels right, now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n