But what if the stickiness is actually a feature to keep things crispy?

Ever see a worn-out baseball glove? The leather gets soft, the pocket forms perfectly to your hand. That's not damage, that's a story. A shiny new glove is useless. Same with a gun, a knife, a workbench. The good marks show it was used for its real purpose. Buffing that out turns a tool with a soul into a store shelf toy.

But what if the problem was the paper and not the glue? I've used glue sticks for quick repairs on cheap notebooks and they held fine for years. Maybe the journal paper was too thick or had a coating. Sometimes a warped book is from too much glue or not enough pressure while drying, not the glue type itself. I feel like we blame the tool when it could be how we used it.

That "spent the rest of the trip on the hard ground" line hit me right in the soul. I did the same thing with a fancy water filter that clogged solid on day one. Went back to boiling water like a caveman and never looked back.

Read a study that called it the "rubber duck" method for debugging.