Notebooks

These are all my notebooks from the beginning of time. It took me awhile to round them all up. They’re stuck in cupboards and bookshelves all over my room. I already found one I missed.

The very earliest stuff is from 1978. There are several in progress now. Most are from the 90’s when I was really in to Natalie Goldberg and freewriting my face off.

They’re not all full and some are new and have never been written in. But most of them are well used.

I haven’t been rigidly consistent but usually when I start a new one I write a few lines on the inside cover about where I’m at like where I live and work and relationship status. Since those things have been consistent for so long, now I tend to write what I’m working on. If it’s a fancy notebook I write where I got it. I put the date I started and the date it’s finished on the cover.

I number the pages and use the inside cover as a sort-of table of contents so I can scan to see what’s in the notebook. For example, “Germany trip, pp 17-27” “Spaceship story, pp 33.”

A lot of it should be burned. The oldest stuff, when it was more about journaling, is truly horrifying. Whew: Drama. Queen.

A few months ago I was looking for something and I paged through a half-dozen of them from about 7 years ago. There is some cool stuff in those. The last thing I need right now are new projects but there were so many ideas and clippings, it made me want to stack them next to the bed and treasure hunt.

I wish I was better about keeping them up now. Now so much is digital, I don’t use them much for collecting random thoughts.

I don’t know why I took this with the shadows on the cover. This notebook is covered with stickers of the German national team for the 2002 World Cup.

I used to do a thing where I’d do a computer free day on the weekends. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

During one of my insomnia nights I had this great idea that I would do a computer free August. But I have to use the computer for work so then I thought I would only use the computer at work. But I actually do need to use a computer for personal things like banking and I don’t want to do that at work. Also my phone is basically a computer so I’m not sure what the plan is. Maybe I’ll just do a computer free day each weekend.