silva rerum

I would have written a shorter letter

Some don’t know this about me, but I have a deep and long­stand­ing love for note­books of all sorts: lined, ruled, A4, pocket-​sized, blank, com­pos­i­tion, etc.. There’s some­thing so prom­ising about a blank note­book – it’s a tab­ula rasa, wait­ing to be filled with doodles, sketches, ideas, musical com­pos­i­tions, fables, stor­ies, tra­gedies, com­ed­ies, satires, any­thing. It’s so innoc­u­ous too; we’ve all used note­books as chil­dren in ele­ment­ary school – com­plet­ing arith­metic prac­tice or writ­ing journal entries with accom­pa­ny­ing drawings.

It shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing that my post-​BIOL 334 splurge was on a pocket Moleskine note­book (blank pages, I don’t like ruled – the lines feel lim­it­ing). I’m still search­ing for an appro­pri­ate accom­pa­ny­ing pen but the Zebra G-​301 pic­tured will do nicely until I find a bet­ter pen.

As with most note­book fan­ci­ers, I suf­fer “blank note­book syn­drome,” a para­lyz­ing dis­order in which I am loathe to scribble upon the pristine pages of a new note­book lest I ruin its beauty. If I intend to use a note­book, I need it to be used thor­oughly, fully, I need to really com­mit to it. I’ve torn pages out of note­books in which I used one page in order to regain the “new note­book” feel. It’s a pathology.

At any rate, Moleskine is renowned for their (expens­ive) note­books; GTD devotees stock up on Moleskines when (and if) they go on sale while authors, musi­cians and artists take com­fort in the fact that they are join­ing Hemingway and Matisse in using the ubi­quit­ous, black notebooks.

Of course, I’ll be modi­fy­ing my Moleskine; I’ll be pick­ing up some dur­able plastic tabs to sec­tion off the book. I’m won­der­ing what I’ll use it for though, I want to ask for suggestions.

Here is what I can ima­gine myself using it for:

• remind­ers for due dates, action items, etc.
• import­ant appointments
• inter­est­ing quo­ta­tions (from poetry, from people, from lit­er­at­ure, etc.)
• blog post ideas
• *chicken-​scratch” sketches
• brain­storm­ing
• con­tact information

I’m keep­ing a few 3”x5” index cards in the back pocket because it seems like a sens­ible thing to do.

Of course, I’m not a Moleskine snob, I’ve got a vari­ety of note­books in my cup­board; many unused and col­lect­ing dust because I haven’t pur­posed them yet. I don’t want to ruin them. I might just end up col­lect­ing them.

Even with innov­a­tions like the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (which I wouldn’t mind try­ing out, if I had the dis­pos­able income), I’ll never stop lov­ing the tact­ile feel of paper note­books, nor will I ever lose my admir­a­tion for their simple elegance.