I ordered the book Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson. Yay! Twitter graphic tweeted by Matt Smethurst, lol-
I use a small, leather blank journal with thick handmade paper for notes during sermons and small group Bible study. I love it because it's small and therefore portable. The paper is thick and stands up to painting on or collaging, which I occasionally do in order to illustrate a thought or insight I'd had. The paper feels good to the touch, also important. The clasp is metal and medieval looking which is a style I enjoy. I'm almost to the end of this notebook so it's wonderful I can order a backup to have on hand for when I need another one.
I love paper products overall. I'm a sucker for notebooks, journals, paper, legal pads, and ephemera. I take just as long choosing refrigerator pads to put on the fridge as I do for my spiritual journal and my online classes' notebooks. And you had me at Post-it.
Along with the notebooks are the careful selections of the pens I use. I have arthritis in my hands so I need a thicker pen. I like retractable so I can 'close' the point and it won't make stray ink marks all around, which I hate. I like ball point and not gel or marker type pens, for the same reason, no stray ink marks. I prefer black ink to blue or colors. The ink needs to lay down on the paper immediately with no warm up, and spread smoothly as I go. And the pen should be pretty. The design should be delicately balanced when I hold it, with a nice taper, and overall pleasing to use and to look at. You didn't know there was so much to choosing a pen, did you?
A friend gave me some Paper Mate pens a few years ago. They have become my preferred pen. I love them. The Paper Mate Silhouette is my absolute favorite, it meets all the above requirements for use by moi. The Silhouette Paper Mate is is a pen that is becoming hard to find, though. The pens she gave me are so good it's taken a few years to run out, so I ordered some Paper Mate pens with my gift certificate, This one isn't a Silhouette but it is also a good pen.
I've used journals of all kinds throughout the years. I don't really write down my thoughts and emotions like a diary, but I use them for picture thoughts, insights into things, collages and so on. Here are a few of my journals.
Clockwise. The leftmost large fabric journal with the sunflower on the front and the turned cover is actually a placemat I'd bought at the Lubec Historical Society annual July 4th yard sale sometime in the early 2000s. I turned it into a journal using a pamphlet stitch.
The beaded journal is festooned with sequins overlaid on black velvet. The paper is good. I rarely use it though...
The flowered one is a journal I'd started about the town I was living in. It has a hand written introduction and pasted-in scraps of life in the town. I started that one in 1990.
The green journal on the right is a Fabriano journal I use for an art journal. I'd written about finding a journal with Fabriano paper here. This one was started in 2016.
The brown ring journal is a Strathmore Visual Journal from a second hand store. Strathmore is another well-known paper outlet. I wrote about finding this expensive and lovely notebook, here. It's another art journal. I really prefer smaller ones to larger. It's from Nov. 2016.
The red small journal is one I'd made. The cover is paste paper and the inside contains hand written thoughts on spiritual books I'd been reading. That one dates to sometime around 2000-2001. I have a LOT of these little notebooks I'd made for the same purposes.
The red one is my very first journal. My parents gave me a trip to London for my graduation. It was a Spring school trip along with other seniors in my High School. Yes, our field trips were to foreign countries. I wrote about what I saw and did and that little journal from 1978 started me both on my world travels and my obsession with chronicling everything I see and do in some kind of journal. I have other travel journals, too, of various kinds, but you get the idea.
I like paper, journals, and notebooks! With me, it's all about the paper products. I think I'll always be a Luddite when it comes to notebooks. I don't have a cell phone and I don't like keeping track of things on any electronic device, portable or not. I love the feel of notebook with a fine paper, and writing my ideas, lists, and thoughts with a well-balanced pen. Blackberry calendar just doesn't have the same thrill for me.
How about you? Do you like notebooks? Keep it all on your phone? Use some other method? Or none at all?
2 comments:
I love that brown journal with the medieval clasp!! And I'm impressed that you made the sunflower journal out of a placemat!
I have been keeping a journal for more than 20 years...I use the Michel Design country diary. I like it because it doesn't have a tremendous amount of room for each day, so I don't feel pressured to write a lot when there's not much to write about. I've been thinking for years that I should quit ordering them, because my life is so boring that no one would ever want to read them (including me), but I also use them as a scrapbook where I keep ticket stubs, cards from others, etc, and I would miss that. I also include my favorite photos of the week, and since all my photos are digital and I don't print most of them, I like having them on each one-week spread. Also, there's a spread in the back of the book to write down the highlights of the year, so in a few years when I'm in a nursing home and can't remember how awesome my life was (ha!), I can just look at the back page and skim over the year in a matter of minutes, which is probably all my mind will be able to process by that point.
Was that too macabre? :D
Not macabre at all! I loved your ideas, actually. They were helpful. Especially about not having a lot of room so less pressure...that's the same idea I prefer smaller journals to larger. I think that after we're gone family members will appreciate having a chronicle of any kind. I'm like you, I don't re-read mine, I don't like memories but I like making them in the moment and I like looking at a full bookshelf of them ;)
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