For most of my life I was a mechanical pencil person. The friction of lead on paper feels right to me in a way I've never quite managed to put into words. Organic, maybe. Like the note costs something small to make, and that matters. Pens and ink always felt too permanent, too committal, every line a decision you cannot take back. I am aware that is probably more revealing about my general approach to life than it is about pens.
That said, I would occasionally betray my principles for a good narrow felt tip. It is always about the friction.
After what I can only describe as an unreasonable number of years and an amount of money I am choosing not to calculate, I have landed on my writing instruments of choice. The answer involves a German company founded in Hamburg in 1928 called rOtring. I had to look up why: the name means "red ring," for the small red band on every pen and pencil they make. Their instruments have metal hexagonal barrels and knurled grips and they are entirely serious objects. Holding one feels different from holding most pens. The weight is right. The balance is right.
The first is the 600 ballpoint pen, except not quite. I do not like ballpoints, so I swapped the insert for a gel refill, two of them, in different colors. To most people this is probably a negligible distinction. To me it was the difference between a pen I tolerated and a pen I look forward to using.
The other thing is the Rapid Pro mechanical pencil with 2.0 lead. Most mechanical pencils use 0.5 or 0.7, fine and consistent and never needing a sharpener. The 2.0 is chunky. It wears down. You have to sharpen it, an inefficiency that is genuinely hard to justify, and the cap has a sharpener built in but no eraser under it, a combination that makes complete sense for a technical drafting instrument and none at all for casual note taking. I use it every day anyway.
Sharpening the pencil is a small ritual. It asks something of you before you start.
I have tried to work out why and I keep arriving at the same uncertain conclusion: maybe I just like the slowness of it. Maybe that's meaningful. Or maybe I am constructing a flattering narrative around the fact that I really like this pencil and don't want to admit that a pencil is making me happy.
Will the rOtring work for you? I genuinely don't know. What I can tell you is that this is a pen and a pencil I reach for every morning without thinking about it, and that's more than I can say for anything else on my desk.