A Commonplace Book - an impulse purchase, hopefully not a forgotten project
October 08, 2024
I saw a video suggested to me the other day for "Why you should have a commonplace book". I was intrigued by that title alone and decided to watch the video and was hooked by this idea. A Commonplace Book, to the best of my description, is a spot to jot down ideas, quotes, pictures, or anything else you want in one indexed spot. It could take many forms whether it's the photos of things you want to remember stored in your camera, whether it's a digital app like this one or like Notion, or just that one super long note on your phone you keep adding random garbage to that you want to remember, only to look at it in 12 months and think "what is this nonsense?"
But this was physical. You got to write in a notebook. You indexed topics to refer back to but didn't need to follow a specific routine or the Bullet Journalling method of taking notes. I am a lover of notebooks, probably to a fault, but I don't work or do anything that requires such constant and up to date hour-by-hour, goal-by-goal record keeping. I've got the things I need to do in my head and my google calendar to keep me up-to-date.
So I of course went out to Blick Art Supplies and bought a cute yellow notebook to write my quotes and stuff in. It sits in my backpack now because I have yet to find a new thing to write in it.
I realize that most content I consume is not via writing - however much I wish I were that person, I don't read physical books all that often. (Why I ordered 6 used books from Alibris last week is a mystery, but I felt I needed those ones physically). However it's much harder to write down quotes from the book or podcast I'm listening to while I'm driving my car. Let alone having to repeat that same 20 seconds over and over so I can get the words right.
But I have this cute notebook to write down ideas. A stamp things and glue in pictures and scraps from newspapers and press flowers and leaves and probably stain with diet coke. I oriented it so it opens up so I could fill down the page instead of side to side. It feels good to write in.
Honestly, not sure if this has an ending, but perhaps that's appropriate when talking about a book for ideas. A spot to write down ideas, that's this blog.