Reach for Your Notebook
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/april-23-2021-end-of-year-reflections/
Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter. And lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.
—Jack London
Anyone who knows me knows I am a notebook girl. In school, I have one with me at all times, and for the cover-to-cover life of that notebook, I’m a notebook monogamist—writing only in that one.
Over the years I’ve had smaller notebooks, larger notebooks, some with book bindings, some with spirals, some with lines, some with grids, and some with blank pages in white, cream, and brown craft. No matter the exterior or interior, each notebook is full of lists, reminders, quotes, meeting notes, ideas, sketches, doodles, and book titles. When I really want something to stand out, I affix a colorful sticky note to the page and add my note to that paper-like frame. Fancy.
When each notebook is full, I place it, in all its banged-up, traveled-back-and-forth-from-home-to-school-worn-glory, on my shelf. I line it up next to the one that came before it so that when I need to remember something, I can flip back through the chronological pages of the notebooks on a quest not unlike a kind of archaeological dig.
Today, I wrote on the last page of a trusty replica of a library-card Etsy-find. She was my second notebook of this year, and on deck is a stunning Pantone beauty I purchased way back in October 2019 at one of my favorite places on the face of the earth—the Strand in New York City—when I was there for a coaching conference with two of my close colleagues. For four days, the three of us crowded into a small hotel room at night, and shared nonstop conversations about what we were learning and the hopes for our schools over late dinners and on the long train ride home from the city. So this new one, this notebook purchased pre-pandemic at a time when I was in a crowded city that was so alive, feels extra special. Just looking at the pages and the color swatches sprinkled throughout fills me with joy.
However, as odd as this may sound, I'm always a little sentimental on new notebook days. It's strange to set something aside that's been a constant companion for so many weeks and months—and this one— well, it's been a really hard and oftentimes very lonely year at school, so there's a lot of tangled heartache in this little spiral.
Nevertheless, our days are becoming a little brighter, and even the hint of a closer-normal-school year on the horizon fills us with collective hope again. This new notebook’s destiny will be to capture moments of where we are, how far we’ve come, and how we will start again. As I crack the cover and my pencil is poised over the first pristine page, I'm proclaiming that good things and better days are going to happen in the active lifetime of this new notebook. I invite you to join me in this promise by reaching for your own notebook—in whatever form it might be—and to pick up your pen.
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