The Half-Used Notebook

And the Truth They Tell About US

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Have you ever noticed that people who love notebooks almost never finish one?

I have stacks of them. Nice ones, too. Leather-bound. Hardcover. Little elastic strap around the middle, like the thing contains state secrets or the coordinates to buried treasure. Most of them were gifts. Conferences hand them out. Trade shows hand them out. Apparently, the world believes that whatever is wrong with us could be fixed if we just had a better place to write things down.

One of mine looks like it came off a pirate ship. I’m serious. The paper looks antique. You open it up, and you feel like you ought to be planning a voyage around Cape Horn, or at least documenting where you buried the gold after the mutiny.

Now, I like notebooks. Or maybe I just like the idea of notebooks. I want to be that person drinking a cup of coffee, deep in thought, capturing it all in my notebook. For me, it never plays out that way. However, I keep buying them or getting them gifted to me.

A fresh notebook feels like a fresh start. You crack the first blank page and, just like that, you are the kind of person who has it together. Organized. Focused. Thoughtful. Philosophical, even.

For about three pages.

Then real life shows up. You misplace the notebook. You leave it on a chair somewhere. Your kid tears out a page for homework. Somebody says something interesting at a meeting, and you grab the closest notebook, which is never the right one. Before long, you have six notebooks going at the same time.

One for work.

One for ideas.

One for random thoughts.

One dedicated to “systems” that were supposed to organize the other notebooks.

That one always dies first.

I tried going digital, too. Bought the iPad. Got the Pencil. Sat there, scribbling on the screen like some Silicon Valley philosopher-king. I looked very impressive for about ten minutes. Then I forgot where I saved the notes.

The Greeks worried about this sort of thing, though probably not specifically about iPads. Heraclitus said you can never step in the same river twice because both you and the river keep changing. I think the same goes for notebooks. You can’t really finish one, because by the time you’re halfway through, you are not the same person who started it. The fellow who wrote “New Fitness Plan” in January is the same fellow writing “Need stronger reading glasses” in October.

Maybe that’s why smart people keep buying them. Every blank page is a quiet admission that we’re still looking for something. A better idea. A clearer thought. Some understanding of ourselves, we haven’t quite caught up to yet.

You can learn a lot about a person from a half-used notebook. Flip through it, and you find ambition, distraction, fear, curiosity, and the occasional flash of something almost brilliant, all mixed in together. Meeting notes next to deep thoughts. Grocery lists next to life goals. One page says, “Call the plumber.” The next page says, “What does it mean to live a meaningful life?”

That right there is the whole human race in two pages.

Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations as private notes to himself, little reminders on how to live with discipline in a chaotic world. I wonder if even he lost track of which notebook he was using.

Probably.

I don’t think the point was ever to finish the notebook anyway. The notebook exists to remind us that we are still thinking. Still searching. Still trying to make sense of the thing.

A half-used notebook is proof that life interrupted us. And life interrupts everybody.

So no, I don’t think I’m broken because I never finish a notebook. I think I’m just another person trying to write down a few thoughts before the next meeting starts, if I can find my notebook.