Foibles: Office Supply Junkie

I wonder how many of you identify with this one . . .

~takes a big breath . . . steps up to the podium~

Hi, my name is Miki, and I’m, uh, . . .  I’m addicted to office supplies!!  ~sobs~

It’s been two weeks since I last bought a G2 pen . . . well, a whole pack of them actually, indigo blue, fine tip.I can’t help it, they’re my favorites.

While I was there I may have looked at a few composition books, the kind with quad-ruled lines in them, which my inner engineer gets all excited about! And those colored sticky notes I never find a use for!! And OMG, multicolored binder clips!! Eek!

20 pack of Pilot G2 pens
Heaven in ink . . . sigh

I wonder if there’s a 12-step program for compulsive writers . . .

Oh, and there may have been some highlighters and a laser pointer I thought my cats might like. No, really: I can’t use a highlighter without a couple of fuzzballs pouncing up to sniff glassy-eyed around my homework. I need the laser pointer to literally throw them off the scent!

But that’s nothing compared to my excitement around anything with paper in it. If you’re a writer, perhaps you know what I mean. It would be nice to know I’m not alone.

When the urge gets to be too much, I will likely set out on a pilgrimage to my favorite place of quill repute (see what I did there?), a wonderful not-so-little place called the New Renaissance Bookshop on 23rd Avenue here in NW Portland. Along with lots of lovely inspirational things of all flavors and genres, there exist whole walls of blank-paged books crying out to be filled with awesome words and thoughts.

If the beautiful covers don’t draw you in . . . the artfully etched or pressed or drawn bindings might, covers meant to be touched as much as looked upon; in a plethora of inspiring scenes and designs. Perhaps the gold-edged or round-cornered pages will call out to you instead. These beautiful books range from the heavy, metal-clasped-and-hinged “book of shadows” variety, to the perfectly mini idea-book sized ones that yearn to live within your purse or backpack, ready to collect your wily ideas.

I can’t walk in that store without fondly admiring–or is it fondling admiringly–at least a dozen of these little journals.

journalsnotepads_ss61But for all this love of the blank page, I will rarely give in to this particular compunction. Experience has finally taught me that the empty pages that so attract my writerly sense will not placate my writerly needs. Often instead I will return home with a lovely book already filled with someone elses words.

The irony here is that although I love the physical form of journals to record my thoughts in, it is the computer keyboard that ends up fitting the bill. But it’s so less romantic . . .  sigh.

Here’s how this happens . . .

On one shelf in my home at this moment sit a half dozen lovely journals, still waiting to be filled. Most of them have their first ten or so pages carefully torn out. Many times have I blindly followed an inspiration to begin a physical journal in one of them, but a few pages in, my impatient fingers remind me how much faster my ideas could be recorded on a keyboard. I shake this thought off as unworthy and tarry onward, thinking how truly wondrous it is to lay ink to paper, ignoring the growing soreness in my wrist. But then, around the tenth or twelfth page mark, another unruly realization invades my paper-and-ink love affair:

My forgotten “organization foible” has unmasked itself once more! ( . . . stay tuned!)

Suffice it to say that I realize that every word I have painstakingly scribbled within those lovely pages . . . will have to be methodically retyped into a computer anyway, if for no other reason than for me to actually see them again. I know from years of trying how impossible it is to locate an entry in all those consecutive pages, especially trying to scan for words and ideas in my own handwriting. Perhaps one day they’ll make paper-and-ink journals with built in keyword search capabilities. I will come back to them then.

Until that day, I’ll stick with my Evernote app. I’ll talk about that one later, too, if that’s okay. I think it might be worth having one blog post just on that. For those of you who dream of becoming paperless, Evernote or one of its clones may be the way to go.

I think it may be a foible within a foible that alongside my love of pen and paper lives a deep desire to be completely paperless . . .  every idea, note, or journal entry digitized, tagged and search optimized.

Ah, the dichotomies that occur when foibles meet. =)

1 Comment

  1. *giggle* I find myself in the same boat with journals and office supplies (yay G2!!!!) to the point that I’ve collected my office supplies in a “treasure chest” *giggle* I’m going to need a bigger one …. But yeah, writing by hand, which seemed to simple as a 10-yr old, now just plain hurts after half a page. But typing ~80wpm, now that’s “writing”!!! LOL. What have we come to?!

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