You're Doing It Wrong

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.

This weekend was Cruisin’ the Gut in Vancouver. Bob checked it out last year and said it was insane so this year we both walked down there.

I had a bunch of stuff to do so I told him I didn’t want to stay long and he said: Don’t worry. It’s like a dorm party. You get a headache after an hour.

That turned out to only be partly true. It’s tons of people lined up and down the street with their camp chairs and coolers. And shiny muscle cars cruisin’ up and down Main. And lots more parked in local lots and on the street. It was super fun in a loud and exhaust-full way.

We have new neighbors and so far, they are terrific.

This morning I woke up at 4am to the quiet sound of music. It’s summer. The windows are open. You can’t get mad about people watching TV in their own home with the windows open. Although I was a little irked that they had to watch TV at 4am.

Once I heard it, I couldn’t stop hearing it so I finally got up to close the window. Except the sound wasn’t coming from their house.

I went around to the other side of the bed to see if Bob had left his headphones on but it wasn’t that.

Then I leaned down to the vent and it was the TV in our basement. I stomped downstairs and turned it off. Then I was wide awake.

I crawled out of bed at 5am thinking: oh well, I’m awake. I can get so many things done since I’m up so early.

I normally get up at 5:20. I’m not sure why I thought those extra 20 minutes were going to be so magical. They were not. I used the whole time trying to figure out how to embed those Instagram photos here.

The insomnia gods have been visiting again. I wake up every night around 2am and toss and turn for a couple of hours.

Has anyone tried the chillow? It sounds like a great idea that wouldn’t really work in actual practice.

I spend a lot of my insomnia time searching for the cool side of the pillow. The rest of the time I spend fretting about random things like whether I should have watered the pumpkins, did that thing I said to the checker at the grocery store sound stupid, or how long before something bad happens?

Anyway! I love frozen fruit bars but I only have them when it’s hot outside because eating cold things makes me cold. In winter I have to let my fruit get to room temperature before I eat it otherwise I have to put on a coat and two pairs of socks to get through breakfast. My weird old lady habits are already stacking up.

This week I wanted to buy fruit bars and holymoly – they have the dumbest names. Is this the best the product development teams can do? Outshine? What does Outshine have to do with fruit juice frozen into a bar? (Lime is the best!)

I think there was another one called something like Frütti and another kind that sounding boring like Country Swale Delite. I picked this because of the variety pack.

I have a note here that says “scrunchie.” What could I possibly have intended to write about scrunchies? Too bad the moment is gone.

I write stuff out and save it in draft and then later when I look at it, I can’t imagine why I thought I wanted to write about it.

For example, a couple of weeks ago a sketchy man followed me downtown.

I have run into all kinds of strange and interesting people, not just here but other places I’ve been, and this was the first time a person scared me.

I originally wrote out the sequence of events but I don’t think that’s very interesting now.

What is more interesting to me is that I felt bad about it afterward. I don’t want to be that person that freaks out because a stranger, who clearly has problems, talked to me.

But I also decided that you have to trust your gut. This man was aggressive and deep in my personal space. Also, his face was banged up so it was reasonable to assume he was capable of violence.

In the end, nothing bad happened. I ran into my office building and he wandered off to bother someone else.