Journaling and wohlgefühl and Twitter
An excerpt or two from a fabulous article in Telegraph by Kevin Braddock
Titled – How Twitter made handwriting cool
“Wohlgefühl: it’s one of those enigmatic words the German language excels in constructing. It can mean ‘wellbeing’ or ‘good feeling’, but it is the word Meike Wander, owner of Berlin’s RSVP stationery shop, uses to describe the timelessly simple delight of handwriting: of pen in hand, ink on paper and skin on surface as thoughts and images transfer from the imaginative to the material.
‘It’s a physical experience, it’s your body doing something,’ Wander says in her hesitant English. ‘Handwriting produces a good feeling – a wohlgefühl.’
“Paper, pens and pencils may scarcely seem like aspirational items – they are often more redolent of the agonies of the classroom than anything else. But if there is a halo around handwriting, its tools, techniques and joys, it would only make sense today; handwriting and notebooking is a trend where austerity meets posterity. Writing is cheap and simple, and won’t get lost if your laptop crashes.
There’s even a new word for the urge to scribble that shops like RSVP and brands like Moleskine sell to: ‘journaling’. In an age dominated by the dizzying proliferation of digital communications, of iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, Twitter, Facebook, email, SMS and hundreds of other technologies, the simplicity of pen and paper suddenly commands a timeless attraction”
