March of the Notebooks
Aug. 21st, 2005 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjpepperMy inner 8 year old is going utterly bugshit right now. Seriously, this is my favorite time of the year, when the drugstores, supermarkets and big boxes are fairly bursting with notebooks, folders, pencils, pens, erasers and pencilcases of all descriptions. Over and over, I have to drag myself away from displays of what passes for Trapper Keepers these days and their slightly more grown up counterparts, Five Star First Gear binders (I have two already that I should probably Freecycle). God but I loved those things growing up, and I'm hard pressed to convince myself that alas, the years where every August/early September I felt entitled to a new binderthing to hold my copious amounts of disorganized papery goodness are long over. I mean, you know that ancient Staples commercial they still occasionally rerun where a dad is gleefully skipping through a staples dumping notebooks and stuff into his basket and dancing with the staplers to "The Most Wonderful Time" cause he gets to send his kids back to school? Yeah, that's me, except I actually mean it.
Of course, over the years I have become a dreadful notebook snob. Even when I was short I refused to use anything but college ruled paper/notebooks (wide ruled was just too babyish and you couldn't fit very much on a page, and my handwriting, while messy, is tiny). While I wasn't too attached to anything I too actual school notes in, I was vastly picky about anything I did actual writing in, preferring composition notebooks with pretty designs on them, sparkly hardbound numbers, swanky plastic spiralbounds that opened flat and whose spiral bindings were big enough for the pages not to rip and tangle... And Goddess save me from the journals. I don't religiously keep a paper journal anymore, not since I started livejournaling seriously, but once upon a time I would pour heart and soul onto pages and pages and pages that ten years later I read and kinda cringe at. I very clearly remember very clearly the solemn, almost sacred ritual of choosing a new notebook for my next volume of, well, teen angst bullshit (but without the body count), and then the green sparkly monstrosity that inspired me to take up pen and notebook again after giving journalling up for the four years of college. But to this day I keep an "everything" notebook in my bag, everything being thoughts, ideas, doodles, to-do lists, storyboards for comic books, drafts off stories, hasty sketches of people and places that I do when I'm bored, hell, even programming architecture, site designs and work notes. And by golly, it has to be a nice one, one that fits in my bag and can handle being dinged up and abused in its vinyl bowels.
Of course, lately I'm getting hard pressed to find a empty bit of space in my current incarnation of Everything Notebook, so naturally I'm on the prowl for a replacement, since its retirement is imminent. Of course, no normal blah, usual back to school type notebook will do, though the latest assortment of beach colored shiny spiralbound scariness holds its own horrifying charm. No, I must admit, my notebook snobbiness has come into play again, and so of course as I was browsing through A.J. Hastings on a couple of occasions over the past two weeks, I discover Moleskines.
It was the pocket notebooks that charmed me at first, though they are ultimately too small for my purposes. The sheer VARIETY of them is jaw dropping - I mean, a pocket notebook ruled for writing music! With like, staves! How cool is that?? But still, my heart is set on the large ruled journals... I need my lines, apparently - plain notebooks have always intimidated me somewhat. Still. The fact that these kinds of notebooks exist in my world brings me an insane amount of joy. Especially since they make datebooks too.
You know, fuck it. I may not need a new binder and a box of crayons anymore, but really, just because I'm approaching 27 really doesn't mean I can't get a new notebook and perhaps an eraser shaped like a cat. Right?
Of course, over the years I have become a dreadful notebook snob. Even when I was short I refused to use anything but college ruled paper/notebooks (wide ruled was just too babyish and you couldn't fit very much on a page, and my handwriting, while messy, is tiny). While I wasn't too attached to anything I too actual school notes in, I was vastly picky about anything I did actual writing in, preferring composition notebooks with pretty designs on them, sparkly hardbound numbers, swanky plastic spiralbounds that opened flat and whose spiral bindings were big enough for the pages not to rip and tangle... And Goddess save me from the journals. I don't religiously keep a paper journal anymore, not since I started livejournaling seriously, but once upon a time I would pour heart and soul onto pages and pages and pages that ten years later I read and kinda cringe at. I very clearly remember very clearly the solemn, almost sacred ritual of choosing a new notebook for my next volume of, well, teen angst bullshit (but without the body count), and then the green sparkly monstrosity that inspired me to take up pen and notebook again after giving journalling up for the four years of college. But to this day I keep an "everything" notebook in my bag, everything being thoughts, ideas, doodles, to-do lists, storyboards for comic books, drafts off stories, hasty sketches of people and places that I do when I'm bored, hell, even programming architecture, site designs and work notes. And by golly, it has to be a nice one, one that fits in my bag and can handle being dinged up and abused in its vinyl bowels.
Of course, lately I'm getting hard pressed to find a empty bit of space in my current incarnation of Everything Notebook, so naturally I'm on the prowl for a replacement, since its retirement is imminent. Of course, no normal blah, usual back to school type notebook will do, though the latest assortment of beach colored shiny spiralbound scariness holds its own horrifying charm. No, I must admit, my notebook snobbiness has come into play again, and so of course as I was browsing through A.J. Hastings on a couple of occasions over the past two weeks, I discover Moleskines.
It was the pocket notebooks that charmed me at first, though they are ultimately too small for my purposes. The sheer VARIETY of them is jaw dropping - I mean, a pocket notebook ruled for writing music! With like, staves! How cool is that?? But still, my heart is set on the large ruled journals... I need my lines, apparently - plain notebooks have always intimidated me somewhat. Still. The fact that these kinds of notebooks exist in my world brings me an insane amount of joy. Especially since they make datebooks too.
You know, fuck it. I may not need a new binder and a box of crayons anymore, but really, just because I'm approaching 27 really doesn't mean I can't get a new notebook and perhaps an eraser shaped like a cat. Right?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 01:05 am (UTC)right!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 02:28 am (UTC)