The Notebooks

 January 5, 2014 - Grapevine, TX.  Work notebooks circa 2011-13.

I was about eleven years old when my Language Arts teacher assigned us to write in a journal every day of that semester.  Since then I've always seen empty notebooks as blank canvases on which the details of an unknown future would unfold.

Nowadays it's old school to write on paper, but [bxA] the thought of keeping electronic notes slays me.  I love the spirals and the covers and the college rule and my favorite blue ballpoint pens...and the pockets where I cram bits of paper that transport me back in time.

Today I organized the work notebooks I've been throwing in bins for almost three years.  I tried not to get swept into the memories of the notes or preoccupied by the unfinished tasks.

Not sure why I used heart-shaped post-its for these peculiar 'things to do.' I did, eventually and surely at the last minute, complete my 2011 taxes.  I didn't tend to the executrix issue so I believe I lost the gig.  Not sure if I meant "resume life" as in start living again, or update my resume ("CV") to reflect my current life.

I probably meant start living again because 2012 wasn't a piece of cake, but, I'm not sure I did such a good job of that in 2013.  It's been feast for famine.

I went to Nigeria in 2013, which was definitely a feast phase.  My sister and I hosted my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party in Boston last summer, another feast.

Not much to say about the famines.

Oh, and this notebook is a gift I got from Martha Beck on a life coaching retreat early last year where I learned what it means to be a Wayfinder.

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." 

- Arthur O'Shaughnessy