Sunday, October 4, 2009

The joys of a new notebook


I've mentioned my love of notebooks before, but I don't think I made it quite clear how much I love notebooks! In the absence of a diary, my notebooks are the quiet carriers of my day to day thoughts and inspirations. I use notebooks for everything.


I have notebooks for:


  • Lists (what to pack, what to do today, people to call, things that are bugging me, things to buy, etc.) - these are my mongrel notebooks, the ugliest, most functional ones which end up with random addresses, phone numbers, mathematical calculations and automatically allocated internet passwords scrawled into them.

  • Ambitions - well, I only have one of these. I write down my most important ambitions, just for a place to keep them. (Go to Egypt; Learn to bake bread; Become a good essayist; etc.) This one is a lovely, cloth bound notebook with a silk tie. It lives on my desk.

  • Thoughts on books - of course. The larger kind of notebook, pretty but functional.

  • Random venting - for those times I wish I kept a diary. I hope that when I'm gone, somebody does me the service of burning these because most of the time, I only write down the things that aren't worth remembering. This is the only use I have for large notebooks.

  • Quotations - I have a quotation fetish. I collect them. And for this, I reserve the tiniest, most beautiful notebooks I own.

Paperblanks makes gorgeous notebooks. I also picked up one today by a new Australian brand called Rasberry- keep an eye out for them.


The strangest thing about my notebook obsession is that I never finish using one. The last quarter or so is always blank. I think this is because they're so personal, so attached to my day-to-day life that when I move to a new place mentally, I can't stand to keep using the same old notebooks.


No two I own are the same.

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