Happy National Pencil Day
March 30, 2026
Today is National Pencil Day! For a guy like me, who has no social life and an unhealthy obsession with pencils and other stationary products, it’s a pretty exciting time to be alive! In fact, it’s so exciting I am eagerly anticipating what my pencil-loving Youtube channels are going to post. Most all of the analog-loving channels I watch have their own unhealthy obsession for pencils, which makes me feel seen. I’ve always loved writing by hand. As an Army officer, I always had a notebook and a pen handy. Some of my pens and notebooks have more jumps than the average Airborne Paratrooper. Over the years, as technology progressed, the need for analog notetaking and writing became less and less prevalent. Though I still carried my
notebook and pen, and because I am a gadgethead, I sought out more digital solutions than analog ones. It wasn’t until I saw how the world operated on digital information gained through data collection from these digital devices and every single software application installed on them. Not only did I have a violent affinity for ensuring my privacy and autonomy, I also have an enormous issue with having the words and ideas I write in a word processing application be used for whatever purposes the software developer and hardware manufacturer wish because they own those words once they’re inputted into the software. These purposes can range from being used to train AI machines to thought and idea monitoring. Frankly, fuck you and no thank you.
Ah, but the pencil! For as long as humans have represented ideas and communication through symbols, we have used rock against wood, charcoal on rock, and even sticks in mud and sand. The pencil, in its modern form, inherited this dynasty of human expression while adding its own legacy of being the physical manifestation of global manufacturing and engineering. Unlike its bastard cousin, the word processor, the pencil turns the imagined into the real, the ethereal into physical reality. But, as is common with all bastard cousins in a royal line, the word processor gains power through dishonor, subterfuge, scheming, lying, nefarious actions, and maliciously selfish intent. It tells you it’s easier, more convenient,
even helpful, while ripping the inherent ownership of your words from you and subtely reshaping your unique voice and language into its cold and soulless image one colored squiggly line at a time. While the pencil has created and completed revolutions in human thought and expression, we must never allow the dark and evil forces of the digital and information empire to destroy our autonomy, our freedom of thought, and our rightful ownership of our words.
TO THE PENCIL!
Jeffery M. Curry
