This Will Fit Nicely In My Collection

Blank pages of a notebook seem to call my name, loud and from afar. They are certainly my greatest weakness, as I have an unexplainable compulsion to purchase notebooks on a whim.  The clean, new paper, store bought smell – I would can it as an air freshener if I could find someone willing to stock it; the fine smooth pages and edges; the colors displayed inside and out are all alluring factors.  Any notebook, however, leaves me to think, “It needs to be filled with some form of artwork, whether words or pictures.” I snatch it up and take it home like a bundle of fireworks on the Fourth of July, and have every intention of inking its pages from side to side with my creativity and passion. Then I am reminded of how many of these notebooks are already in my possession – stacked on shelves or on the floor, lying in drawers or on tabletops … each with a specific purpose assigned it to justify my purchase: “This will be for my journal, this one for poetry, that one for short stories, this could serve as a scrapbook, and this one I will fill with other’s inspirational pieces, etcetera, etcetera…”  

Realizing that this is simply too many notebooks to carry around, I then decide to combine the contents of two or three notebooks or switch notebook purposes, thinking,“This one is so much better for this.”  The real dilemma occurs when I spot a particularly attractive notebook, perhaps a lively color or unique design, or an odd geometrical size or shape.  They are simply too extraordinary for the mundane. How could I deface such fine pages with the particulars of my petty, boring life?  The idea often seems sacrilegious, like part of a tree was sacrificed in vain. Both scenarios leave me with numerous unused notebooks, each beautiful in its own right but receiving the same fate as it had before I bought it.  True, Coke-Cola memorabilia or those little porcelain dolls scattered all about the house aren’t much better as far as collections go, but perhaps more common. The last one I bought has bold purple stripes, and the one before that is honeybee yellow. There is one with a poem written beautifully across the front, and another has a picture of an adorable baby on the front.  I have a red suede one which I finally brought myself to use after four years of dormancy.   The end result of this seemingly incurable disease is me having a stack of notebooks that I don’t know what to do with.  I figure “I’m a writer, thus I write,” but I don’t write nearly as fast or as often as I buy. The obvious solution would be to write more – I have an excuse, a motivation, an impetus.  There should be words running out of me like melted butter, but of course, butter is messy, especially when it’s melted.  At some point, I’m going to have to be okay with messy, right?  Either that, or find someone who can gift wrap for me.