I bought a notebook. Yes, another one. No, I did not need another notebook. But, you know…
It all started when I heard about a new stationery shop that opened in my city. Of course I had to go visit one weekend. They had a great selection of fancy notebooks. (Despite my avidly accumulating notebooks, I am picky about which ones. It is important that they have paper suitable for fountain pens, my preferred writing instruments.) It was a nice, friendly, cozy place. I only wanted to support them. So I bought a notebook.
It’s a brand I’ve never seen before: a Nakabayashi Logical T-line.
What am I going to do with it? Well, let me tell you. You don’t end up a notebook hoarder like I am by worrying about questions like that. But as it happens, I do have a clear purpose for it. I am going to use it for writing blog posts. It is really surprising that I don’t draft more posts by hand.
This post was first written in the aforesaid notebook. I took it to a cafe and wrote these words with coffee and a donut. The sun is streaming in through the windows. It is a lovely day at the start of summer. The air is gently warm. I can raise my head and look outside at all the people going by, on foot and in car. I’d include a picture if I weren’t so shy about that sort of thing1.
I could bring my laptop (in fact, I did, and used it to work a little on another project) but what fun would that be? I admit it, I’m a sucker for aesthetics.
When I took the notebook out and searched my thoughts for what to write about, I initially thought about declaring some opinion or hot take. Or possibly sharing some new fact I learned from a headline, or perhaps skimming a Wikipedia article. It would probably be better for SEO if I did those sorts of things. But that isn’t really what I want this website to be and it never has. I don’t exclude those kinds of posts from consideration, I just don’t want to do too many. It also puts a bad taste in my mouth (or maybe this coffee has just been sitting in the pot for too long) to sit down and deliberately try to find an Opinion. I prefer spontaneity for this blog. This blog is whatever I happen to have on my mind at a given time.
What’s on my mind right now is the paper in front of me. So that’s what this is about.
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I know I’ve had an idea for a blog post elaborating on this. I was going to link to it but it seems I never got around to writing it. ↩︎
