frozen octopus

One of my pinball philosophies is if you win a free game in pinball, you leave it for the next person. Better someone else comes along and gets the joy of finding it.

I usually don't have a better game if I play the free game so it's better to leave it and move on to a different machine.

Buying a pencil satisfies many needs for me. My hunter/gatherer genes get a chance to do something when shopping without spending tons of money. My brain/heart feels less guilty for stomping around a store and leaving empty-handed. My hands love it because holding a pencil is the closest thing to holding a drumstick in the stationery store.

I use them at home, work, and band practice. The only small drawback is that once they're sharpened down to shorter than your hand, the balance gets weird. At that size, they're cool for writing a tiny note or putting in an everyday carry bag. Mini-golf pencil-sized pencils are a pain for writing for five minutes straight, though.

My solution lately is that when a pencil gets shorter than hand width, it graduates to "cross-off" level. The longer pencils have to do the hard work of writing word after word on checklists and brain dumps. The short pencils get the honor of crossing off completed tasks and ideas. They stay in the flow until they sharpen away into oblivion.