We live in an age where the pitter-patter of little keyboards has made way for the silent agony of typing on touchscreens, little QWERTYish keyboards on small surfaces that leave one looking like a monkey trying to solve a puzzle.

Truth be told, I don’t get release from tapping away at a keyboard. There’s no physicality to it. I carry a Moleskine reporter notebook with me almost everywhere I go, and for a years I went without – going instead with the ‘smartphones’, pads, etc – things that are supposed to ‘boost productivity’ and ‘blah blah blah marketingspeak marketingspeak!’ in ‘new and improved’ ways.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m becoming a dinosaur. Maybe I appreciate the relative privacy of my notebook – where it’s not encrypted and yet more private than using a smartphone, where the only people I need to worry about prying into my written thoughts being the ones physically close to me.

What I do know is, after getting back to writing in my Moleskines after these years, is that a good pen and a good Moleskine is like sex for me – the feel of the pen as it presses on the pages, cushioned as you break in a notebook, is simply a pleasure – the ink flowing properly, drying quickly, and flipping pages to write more. It’s sex.

And keyboards are like masturbation. Sure, you get some release, but it’s lacking that something.

That physicality.

That… sex.