Remarkable vs. Paper

Am I too old to say bougie?

Hey,

Over the years I’ve tried multiple note taking solutions. Of course my computer is on that list. I’ve also been an Evernote user, but found myself wanting a pen and paper solution. So I got a Rocketbook, hoping that would bridge the gap, but it just never felt quite right. It was always like writing on a whiteboard, and I didn’t want to constantly have to clean it up. Then I switched over to Google Drive, which works pretty great for digital backup, but still doesn’t solve for pen and paper. Most recently, I’ve blended in iOS notes because of importing and formatting issues with a few things I wanted to integrate.

What I’m saying is I’ve tried some stuff. All of them were great in their own way, but none of them could do everything I wanted. And realistically, there aren’t products or services that meet every whim and fancy. You have to choose. There are tradeoffs and compromises. Unsurprisingly, the algorithm observed my buying habits. It watched me search for productivity hacks and note taking strategies while it custom built an advertising campaign, code named “Stuff a nerd will buy”.

So you can imagine my interest when Remarkable started showing up in my feeds. A digital note taking option that looks and feels like paper? And down the rabbit hole I went...

I watched videos. Read reviews. I can’t tell you how many times I went to their website just to browse through their support files. The more I learned, the more convinced I became this might be the note taking solution I’d been searching by for. And as soon as I thought about how this tool would improve the book editing process, I was all but sold.

But I had a concern...

No, not really anything to do with its functionality. There were some potential quirks, but nothing I viewed as a deal breaker. And I don’t want to do a product review. There’s plenty of those out there, trust me. If you want to see the thing in action, it’s easy to find. And I could even get past the price tag (which isn’t small).

If I could summarize my main hesitation, it came down to the fear of getting away from paper. Real paper that you can touch and smell. But more than that, the physical thing that my kids can access someday, without any complication or hurdle. Years (hopefully) from now, I want them to be able to find a journal and be able to simply flip through. I want them to have the option to see something handwritten, read what I was thinking about or going through. And I don’t want there to be a barrier to get past. No password to crack, no website to sign into. Just crack open a journal and start skimming through. Turn the pages at their leisure.

On the flip side, there’s no guarantee those physical relics remain. I have lots of journals scattered throughout my house. They could be lost in a flood, or they could be destroyed in a fire. Maybe they just disappear, gone to who knows where. When I think about it in those terms, there’s something to say for cloud storage. Always there, readable from multiple devices, secure (relatively).

And then I thought about photography. I thought about our old family photo albums. I thought about how physical photos, while not non-existent, don’t play as much of a role as they had in times past. When we look back over the years, it’s a slideshow on a television. Even the process of taking pictures has largely gone digital. I have zero hesitation using my iPhone camera to snap a family photo. I actively avoid buying physical media. And I started to think that maybe I should think about writing in a similar light.

I don’t know what my kids will want after I’m gone. Maybe they will want to read my thoughts, maybe they won’t. I’m fine either way, as long as they have the option. I don’t think the format matters as much as the content. As long as it’s accessible, that’s all that really matters to me.

From my remarkable tablet,

Hiram