Penspinning

One of my hobbies (that's not gaming) is Penspinning which is the art of spinning a pen using your fingers in an aesthetic manner.

Before committing to learn the harder tricks, I first encountered Pen spinning in High School where a classmate thought me a basic 1-2 combo that I now know to be called a Thumbaround Harmonics. That trick has been in my "repertoire" for over a decade.

The only one for over a decade; because I was not aware that it was actually a thing, or that it was even called Penspinning, or that there's a huge international community dedicated in disseminating information, competing and glorifying Penspinning.

Truth be told, it was boredom that made me take interest in Penspinning. I was, around two years ago, between jobs to put it lightly. I needed something to occupy my time that would somehow compliment my primary pastime: Reading.

My thought at that time was that while a hand is holding a book (or my Kindle), the other would be idle which is unacceptable (yeah)... and then came Stumpleupon to solve this dilemma. an article featuring Penspinning was featured in one of the websites that Stumbleupon randomly feeds its users. I was like "Hey, I knew a bit of it, why not give it a try."

So long story short: I gave it a whirl.

Funny thing is "training" became so engrossing that it was no longer a complement to reading, it has become a full blown hobby that it needed it's own time apart to master some of the trick. I even bought pens specially for Penspinning from the US.

Now, I can't really call myself an expert Penspinner, I'm way way still out there, but I'm pretty confident enough to say I'm no longer a novice because I know enough to freestyle, and I know at least 1 difficult trick. I think they call the next level Intermediate so I think I'm in that area.

Unfortunately, I think I'm stuck on that level as I have not tried to learn anything new for a few months now. In truth, I'm running out of easy tricks to learn and the difficult ones are.. well.. really difficult. I also have alot of things going on so i don't have enough time to train a new trick.

But maybe someday.. you never really know, and you can't really unlearn all the tricks you've learned, it's not something your muscle memory can forget like touch typing.