Leaving Notebooks Unfinished
I used to be the sort of person who doggedly stuck with a notebook until it was full. In my early days of “fancy stationery” I would be in my Moleskine notebooks for 3 - 6 months and everything would go in there. Later, I got my first traveler’s notebook and was very dedicated to my notebooks being separated by subject/story/purpose. Those inserts would be in my TN for months until they were filled. This worked for me for a long time. After all, I was recently setting out on my stationery journey and wasn’t very familiar with all of the wonderful tools out there. At first, my TN was a pocket size and completely full of Field Notes brand notebooks that I wrote in with an EF Kaweco. Later, I discovered Tomoe River paper and would get pocket-sized inserts from various brands. Basically, it was easy to stick with it because I had limited paper, pen, and ink choices. Despite these limitations I wasn’t always successful. Sometimes I would get bored or perfectionism would kick in and I would give up on a notebook because I “messed it up.”
A stack of partially filled notebooks.
They started as one thing… sometimes gained another… and sometimes I go back to the beginning after all.
Over the past few years I began to expand my paper horizons and discovered so many amazing different paper types. Now I end up in trends. Sometimes the thoughts flow better on onion skin paper. Maybe cream paper. Tomoe River. Cosmo Air Light. Textured paper. Lined, grid, or blank. I have a large drawer full of paper and that’s not counting the notepads in the slots in my desk or the empty notebooks waiting to be filled in a photo storage box.
With access to stationery from all over the world it makes me excited to be a stationery hobbyist… but it’s a lot of choices when I start up a new notebook. With those choices can become indecision. Maybe I’m not really feeling that paper or a different type of paper would be better for what I need it for (translucent tends to work better for journalling or brainstorming as opposed to writing prose, but not always). Now that I also make a lot of my own inserts from looseleaf paper or paper pads, I can have even more options than what I can buy in the A6 size.
And so sometimes I leave a notebook unfinished. I might write in it for a little while and then tuck it into my desk because it wasn’t working or I wasn’t feeling it. I often come back to it and finish it off weeks or even months later. Sometimes I don’t at all. I just tuck it into my finished notebook box. I’ve decided it’s okay to let the pages stay blank. It’s not like I don’t have enough notebooks to last several lifetimes… maybe… haha.
I’ve got a ton of examples in my finished notebook box of notebooks I abandoned and then came back to them later. There is a start date, a gap, and then a new start date. I had an A5 notebook that started out as a research notebook and then ended as a journal. It’ll create chaos for anyone who has to archive my notebooks when I’m dead… but it will provide them with a great insight of how my mind works. Also, just put it in chronological order, not by subject, in the archive, please.
Let’s give ourselves permission to crack open new notebooks, but to revisit old ones after setting them aside.
A notebook that languished for a long time with only a few scribbles in the front… then I decided to hand draw some lines one night and now it’s a whole new creature and can be completed.
Currently Inked
Van Dieman’s Ghost Ship - Kaweco Sport x Elite Royalty Deep Red BB - I/3 left - I swapped this ink out of my other pen and it’s a whole new ink in this set up. I really enjoy this ink in the broader, wetter nib. It gives it a great sheen on many different papers and a much smoother flow. A journalling and work note combo for this week.
Colorverse NGC 6302 - Kaweco Art Sport Tiger’s Eye 14K BB ‘journaller’ - 1/2 left - Still loving this combination. It’s a really great blue-green shader. Debating on whether to refill when it’s empty or swap for another color for a time. This will definitely be a combo I return to in the future.
Sailor x Tinterias Podcast Homemade Tortilla - Kaweco Sport Cognac M stub - 1/4 left - Getting to the end of this fill. It’s a great warm brown, but at this moment I’m feeling cooler colors. When this one runs out it’s going to get cleaned out for a bit.
Diamine Honey Burst - Kaweco Sport Dark Olive BB - 1/2 left - One of my favorite yellows. It’s giving a pop of color to my writing. Mostly making a few notes with this pen this week.
Pennonia x Amarillo Stationery Azul Frida - Kaweco Liliput copper 14K B - 1/4 full - Still loving this blue. It’s filling a niche that I have some other blues in… but this one just makes me happy.
Colorverse Iris Nebula - Kaweco Liliput fireblue 14K M ‘journaller’ - mostly full - I ended up refilling this one midweek. This is a beautiful soft purple with an interesting shimmer. It’s also really well-behaved. I’m really intrigued by the two other colors in this set… but Iris Nebula was the one I was most excited about.
Sailor x Tinterias Podcast Agave - Kaweco Sport Iridescent Pearl B - new fill - I decided I wasn’t quite done with this color after using it for headers in May. I swapped out my M CSI nib for a round B and this has been my at work workhorse for the last few days. This is just such an interesting gray-blue.
Ferris Wheel Press Storied Blue - Kaweco Sport Mellow Blue B - new fill - I wanted to load up this color in another pen to see how it compared to agave. They are both in the same tonal range, but Storied Blue is a lot more blue whereas agave is more gray. Both wonderful. This might be another case of a nib/pen switch up since I haven’t been drawn to this combo much this week.
Colorverse Milky Lavender - Kaweco Sport Macchiato 1.5 - Inspired by @afleetingripple, I decided that Milky Lavender would be my header color for June. This is such a delightful purple, I bought a bottle last fall after using up my sample a while back… this one might be sneaking into a writing pen too at some point.
Colorverse Iris Nebula on Itoya Oasis paper.
Sometimes to get writing you need some cool washi tape (available at Amarillo Stationery) and a cute cat sticker (got them from Yoseka Stationery but as of this writing they aren’t available).
In the TN
Hobonichi A6 Weekly Calendar Insert - appointments and short “did today” listings.
Kokuyo Business paper lined insert* - I was feeling the need to carry around a little more “emotional support stationery” this week and added this one. It’s got some random old scribbles in it from the last time I carried it around. I’ll probably use it for some story scribbling.
Jetpens View Corona insert* - I did a lot of scribbling on random things in this notebook this week. Brain dumps, blog drafting, some random lists… it’s a notebook with no expectations. I had hand drawn lines into it a few weeks ago when I couldn’t sleep and it’s kind of fun to write on the shaky, uneven lines throughout the book.
Lamy A6 insert - making lists and keeping track of information for some workshops I want to take.
Kokuyo Perpanep Tsuru Tsuru grid insert* - another “emotional support stationery” add. I haven’t written anything in it yet, but it feels nice to carry it around.
Itoya Oasis Line Friends Sally notebook - brainstorming and journalling.
*I made these myself by using looseleaf or tearing pages from larger notebooks.
One of my resolutions for summer was to take more walks on the shores of Lake Superior.
Now I just have to enjoy walking and writing on the beach until the flies hatch! (If you’ve lived in the Midwest you know what I’m talking about.)