New Writing Kit: Logitech MK850 & Field Notes

Yesterday I hit a milestone: for the first time in nearly four years, I’m a week ahead on writing blogs. Which means the temporality of these posts gets a little weird, because “Yesterday” can now mean a week-in-the-past-when-I’m-actually-writing-things, or one-day-back, when-I-was-posting-about-a-thing.

Getting ahead has largely been a function of the first major change I made when setting up my new workspace: adding in a whiteboard that sits in front of the “goofing off” computer, tracking my weekly to-do list. Thus far, it’s kept me on track with writing, with reading, with blogging, with newsletter creation, and with a bunch of little things I need to do throughout the week.

It’s not a bad result for something that cost me $20, in terms of the value it delivers. I get quite gushy about it, when talking to folks about getting shit done.

The other pieces of new kit i’ve added to my workspace is this: a Logitech MK850 wireless Keyboard and Mouse combo and a set of Field Notes notebooks.

The keyboard was a change requested by my partner, especially since the new desk set-up makes it easier for me to work over weekends. See, I have a habit of typing incredibly fucking fast when I’m in first draft mode, and I’ve always worked on old, cheap banger keyboards that make an incredible racket when I’m really flying.

Typing a thousand words typically sounded like a hailstorm rattling against a corrugated iron roof, and while that was satisfying to me on a personal level, it’s not the best thing to unleash in a tiny flat when your partner is sleeping in the next room.

“It’s time for a quieter keyboard and mouse,” my partner suggested, and I had a little spare cash for such things, so I went out to fix the problem.

The MK850 wasn’t the keyboard I set out to buy, but it’s the one that was in stock when I hit my local Office Orcs–a wireless keyboard and mouse combo, considerably quieter than my old banger, with an added bonus that eked it ahead of the others they had available.

Because the MK850 is set-up to switch between multiple devices with the touch of a button, and it automatically adjusts which keys do what when switching between Mac and PC devices. Given my tendency to switch between a MacBook (writing and layouts), a desktop pc (socials and gaming), and a Samsung tablet (random stuff in the background) throughout the day, the MK850 actually replaces two mouse/keyboard combinations in one fell swoop.

It’s still not quite as much fun as making a racket on my old banger, but it means I can work without disrupting my partner and that’s a big shift. Also, that PC/mac adjustment is huge–mapping the Macs Command key onto the Alt key on most PC Keyboard seems like a simple thing, but I’ve spent a year working on keyboards that insist it should be on a spare key four or five spots away.

Not having to think about where the keys are for your keyboard shortcuts actually keeps them keyboard shortcuts, you know?

Couple that with the fact that my noise level has dropped considerably, and it’s been a pretty neat purchase. The only real test left is getting into a marathon game of Civ IV, which is heavy on the mouse clicks and gets referred to by my partner as “that clicky game,” to test how much less grating the new mouse is.

I got crazy excited when the Field Note brand of notebooks started appearing on Amazon Australia. This is partially because I’m a bit of a notebook nerd, and really like the Field Notes design (particularly the special editions), and partially because they were so damned hard to track down at a reasonable price in Australia. Even when they’d list local stockists on their website, I’d go check ’em out and discover they hadn’t actually kept any in stock for months.

In practical terms, they’re roughly the equivalent of the slim pocket Moleskinses–same size, same page count, same cardstock cover. I may even lean towards the Moleskine’s paper a little harder, since it’s a nice comforting cream rather than the stark white of the baseline Field Note. Here’s a shot of two in-progress notebooks from both brands, if you’re interested in a comparison:

But lets be honest: you don’t pick up a notebook like this if you’re thinking in purely practical terms. You pick it up because you’re entranced by the design and the little decisions that set it apart, for the spark of joy you get when you discover the five-inch ruler on interior back cover (which, to my surprise, actually comes in handy), or the pre-printed section for logging start and end dates, or the little details like this:

Mostly, you pick it up because those little details let you pretend you’re a steampunk explorer for a half-second, and because the price difference between it and the Moleskine isn’t large enough to stop you.

And its great for that. Opening the Field Note makes me a little bit happy every time I go to write down some notes, and that matters enough to be worth the white page.

Right now, one of my markers of success with Brain Jar and writing–a completely frivolous and meaningless marker, but a personal one–is hitting a point where I can pay for a yearly subscription to the Field Note special editions without fretting about the money I’m spending. The idea of having packs of pretty, fun to write in notebooks delivered to me on a quarterly basis appeals, particularly given how nice some of the special editions look.