Notebooks

Saturday 7.10pm

For years now, on and off, I have kept notebooks. Less formal or demanding than a diary they are a place to put things. What things? Anything and everything in fact - ideas, appointments, shopping lists, sketches, handwriting practice, my thoughts on life and the answers to those quizzes and questionaires you find in self help books.

Like dream catchers they allow me to put things down in writing before I forget, and the very act of writing encourages and helps my ideas become more organised, more real. The ones from the past become little snapshots of what I was doing and how I felt at the time. Like music, reading one will take me back to a particular time and I can feel what I felt like then, what I was doing, even what my hopes and aspirations were. A couple of posts ago I listed what makes me happy and one particular notebook has the same thing written years ago  along with my wishes for the future. Written on the edge of a hillside in the Scottish Borders, long before I met Nicola, I find the entry particularly poignent because reading it I can feel exactly how I felt then and you know most of what I wished for has come true. (the rest I am still working on).

I have three notebooks on the go at the moment, one for work, one to keep track of money and my newest one above, is for everything else. Well four actually - my computer is also a notebook - I am writing this on it now, but the the paper ones will always be there as well.

Notebooks. Everyone should have one.