I like to take an inventory of my pen collection now and again. A check-in with myself as to which pens are working for me and which would be better housed with more eager owners.

No plan survives a week entirely intact. The first two weeks of summer break strayed widely from my original plan of reading and commonplacing. Yet, there’s a strong silver lining. Summer months offer me the time and freedom to follow projects as they capture my attention.

And put them into new journals.

Some of my favorite and most useful stationery tools are unexpected discoveries. Lovely little surprises I stumbled into. New tools that were thrust upon me by loved ones and the universe: a sample vial stand and a wood pen tray.

For notes to be searchable, they need an afterlife. The key to creating an afterlife for my notes — which live in both the analog and digital worlds — is keywords. Keywords that I create when revisiting my notes hours or days later. Keywords I attach to portions of notes, rendering them searchable on my computer. Keywords, like bow ties, are cool.

Teaching and research produce hundreds of thousands of annotated documents. We can all use searchable coolness when trying to find what you’ve already noted amidst that ocean of scribbles.