A New Notebook
I don't spend too much on notebooks anymore, although, I still have a slight addiction to fancy journals with hard covers (can you say The Moleskin?) and slick designs and admittedly possess more than my share of them right now. My notebook of choice most days are the very simple, very inexpensive black and white (in color if I'm lucky!) composition notebooks that run about 99 cents in most stores. For some reason I write better in these than any notebook I've tried and more words seem to spill out onto the page. For 99 cents there just doesn't seem to be much pressure to pen something incredibly prolific and genius; I just write.
Today is one of those days I look forward to as a writer. Today I start a fresh new composition notebook. The blank pages seem to hold so much mystery, so much promise. One by one, day by day, each page begins to take on a new identity with a story to tell and way more about me than one would ever care to know. But this notebook holds a little more weight than those that have gone before her. This is almost like the first one of her kind that I was introduced to in college. In a sense, she is another first in a new phase in my life. Is this Chapter Two? Volume Two? I'm seeing it more like Series Two; it can run for years, the characters have changed but there are elements of the last main character sprinkled throughout just with more substance. I'm the last main character and the new one all at once. I can be anyone I want on Wozzievision - live, in color, and in HD.
I did something I never thought I'd do before I moved out here to Oregon. I sat with the last 20-25 notebooks that I've collected and filled since first said composition notebook my junior year in college. I thumbed through them, smiled at where I'd been, cried at much of what I experienced, and then smiled and cried at once as I saw how far I'd come. Then, without thinking about the act I was committing too much, I threw them all away. I realized that was a time in my life that I learned, grew, and loved but that a new time is ahead of me and I don't care to constantly look back and question what I could have done differently. All the memories (some bad, but most incredibly wonderful) are in my heart anyway; it's time for new ones to be created.
Here's to a new day, a new notebook, and what I'm certain is going to be a long running series on Wozzievision.