Humble Beginnings

On a road trip across the United States with my dad, from July 31st, 2021, to September 17th, 2021, we stopped in Telluride Colorado to visit friends and family. I brought my flying panda mod from Pen Stock with me because I thought I might have time to learn some new tricks. I never really spent dedicated time practicing and the hardest tricks I knew were shadow 12 and flush sonic 34-14-12. My only source of pen spinning for the last year and a half was Pen Stock. In a Formula 409 fumed log cabin in the mountains, an hour away from the nearest town, I spent most of my time. Most days, my dad was 30 minutes away working at his friend’s house. This meant I had an abundance of time to do whatever I wanted.

I spent most of that time not doing much other than practicing speed typing. Doing that all day was hurting my hands and I thought about practicing pen spinning to increase my dexterity and stamina for typing. I searched Google for more pen-spinning resources, which is when I found the Pen Spinning Reddit. I was blown away by how good people were. I wanted to be just like them. I stumbled upon Tigre’s simple linkages (SLS) and started practicing a few of the easiest ones. This is when the pen-spinning obsession started to kick in. Instead of spending 6+ hours a day on speed typing, I started spending 6+ hours a day on pen-spinning.

Being inundated with Reddit content, I became fascinated by speed. I ended up “wasting” a lot of my practice time by trying to be fast at sonic rise before learning sonic reverse or palm-down charges.

Conclusion

Now even though I learned a few fundamentals about a year prior, I tell people I started pen spinning in August 2021, because this is when I found the community and started practicing new things. I am forever grateful to have found the pen-spinning community and I hope to continue supporting it, helping it grow the same way it helped me.