On a pretty regular basis, I get super stressed out and decide, I need to write something down. I need to get these thoughts and ideas and to do lists out of my head and onto some paper so I can think straight.
So, I open up a notebook, and put ink to paper, all the while, thinking, wow, this is going to make me feel SOOOO much better.
Today, I'm finding that all these moments of crazed note-writing haven't really gotten me anywhere. They ease my racing mind for a while, enough for me to sleep through the night, or enjoy a cup of coffee without having an aneurism, but ultimately it's brought me to this:
36 notebooks. Yup, 36 of 'em. Spiral-bound freebies from seventh street filled with lists of what I ate and how far I ran in February of 2008. Paperback moleskins with only a couple notes in each, like a grocery list, or a recap of a 3pm phone call with someone named "John." Hard-cover journals filled with poetic tidbits that I thought I might someday string together into one complete thought. Then there are the sketchpads, fat with tracing paper, rag paper, watercolor paper, graph paper, all different sizes and oozing with half-cocked ideas for ads and invites and logos and room layouts.
The funniest part is, for the life of me, I can't manage to fill a single one. The anal-retentive perfectionist that I am, you'd think I'd buy 100 of the same notebook and fill them methodically, marking each page with the date and the purpose of my note. (I wish.) But no; my urge to create order by writing lists and jotting my thoughts down has only lead me to a further state of confusion, standing in the middle of my office, searching through my stacks of 36 partially-used notebooks, for that phone number for the shoe repair guy, that sketch for the best way to reaarange my living room, or my to-do list from last week.
Not only am I incapable of filling a notebook, but I also can't throw one away. (God forbid I waste a perfectly good sheet of paper.)
Ultimately, these ludicrous stacks of notebooks prove only that, despite my attempts to combat it, I'm actually quite scatterbrained. But I like to think the bottom line is this - I dig a blank sheet of paper. I dig the wide-open world of the half-empty notebook waiting to be filled. There's nothing like knowing that there's always room for more ideas, more ways to skin the cat, and more places our minds can go. Because as long as there's an empty sheet of paper, there will be thoughts to fill it.
Note: This blog entry may or may not have been ghost written by Andy Rooney.
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