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I Have Too Many Notebooks (but I’m okay with that)
I’ve had a lifelong obsession with notebooks. Ruled, graph, dot grid, Moleskine, Japanese imports, Field Notes. They’re like a drug to me.
My latest obsession is with the Midori MD A5 notebook. I just bought two — one lined for journaling, one graphed for sketching out various projects. They have given me a level of joy that most people would find odd. In fact, this post originated from a journal entry in one of those new notebooks. The simplicity of the Midori notebooks is what makes them so desirable. Plain white cover, antique binding, cream colored paper, and a single bookmark. They are unremarkable at first glance, but writing in them with a Muji pen (0.38mm if you’re interested) is such a great feeling that they often inspire me when my brain is unwilling to cooperate.
I honestly don’t know why notebooks are one of my most coveted items. I rarely fill one up before buying a new one, but I’ll often return to an old one and use it again for a while. Not for any particular reason. Maybe it just felt right at the time I did it.
There’s so much promise that comes with a new, blank notebook. I think for me it’s a motivator. What can I create with it? What ideas can I fill it with? What feelings will I pour into its pages that will help me uncover some truth about myself? A new notebook represents a fresh start, a beginning. Sometimes you won’t know what it is until you start using it.
Whatever notebooks do for me, I enjoy it. I may never finish one. I’ll probably buy six more before I’m halfway through these new ones. Maybe I just fetishize notebooks without really using them to their full potential, which would make me some sort of paper mill dilettante, I guess.
But this particular quirk makes me happy, so I’m going to be okay with it.
