Geek with a notebook

When I say that I've set goals for 2010, I'm not kidding. My process this year resulted in two pages in my notebook, organized into neat categories (underlined in green): Personal, Business - Out of the Woods (Joe's cabinet shop), Building, Love, Financial, House, Business - New! I know I'm probably way too Type A/retentive about this process for many people's liking, but I love it. And since it's in the notebook that goes everywhere with me, it's so handy as a reference or in case I need to add something -- like last week's addition of "Stop Hating" as a goal in the Personal category.

I'm a little crazy about this particular notebook. I started it in 2004, then set it aside for a while, so it tracks a variety of adventures. It starts with notes on "developing a home yoga practice" workshop I took with Lori Salomon, then lists all the books I read in 2004, to notes for our trip to France in 2005, to business ideas, to last year's beekeeping course, to a meditation class, to inventory of 2009 blogposts, to yoga, yoga, and more yoga. At an event a few weeks ago, I put my notebook down on a chair to save a spot. When I returned, it was gone -- setting off a serious panic for me. All that personal history: gone! Fortunately, it was returned (thanks, Kalila!), ending my sense of bereftness pretty quickly. Seriously, I am never without this notebook, though I can see that I am nearing the end of its blank pages now. [Meaning that I have already started dreaming of what kind of notebook will take its place: same Moleskin style or something different, oooo maybe something Levenger?]

This notebook habit is old for me, and probably stems from the whole cahier preciousness of my French early schooling. "Harriet the Spy" has a role in it too, along with all those lockable diaries of my youth. I don't really know how to pass the time if I don't have a pen and mechanical pencil and notebook at hand. I know enough about my faulty memory never to trust that I'll remember that idea or book title or album name later. And I just plain like writing things down, something so satisfying about the shapes, so different from this exercise at the laptop.

Leafing through this book, I see that I went through my calendar (yes, another thing I carry everywhere) and wrote down the FOUR movies we saw in 2009, that challenging year. Also charming: the plan for last year's garden, with cultivation dates. Delicious to sit and remember where I've been and to consider where I thought I was going!

To support this reliance on paper, I solemnly swear to recycle and reduce my consumption of other resources. No matter how far I progress, I just can't see giving up the feeling of paper under my hands, the sweet look of letters freshly formed, not to mention this compulsion to capture thoughts and events, no matter how small, in pen and ink.