I’m ready for next year.
This doesn’t mean I’m doing away with Christmas (although an interesting T2 article on doing without it, and music (it being annual No Music Day today), for a limited period of time, in order to enjoy them more on getting them back).
A few years ago, I started my Useful Notebook option. Up til now, it’s tended to have been bought in Italy on holiday, while Esselunga had their fun covers with different fruit and veg (John Lemon and all that – lemon in JL shades). Today I braved the student union shop at Glasgow Uni, and got my notebook for next year.
Hard to choose. I could have saved rhinos buying one notebook, or used recycled tyres or drinks cartons with another. I’ve ended up with something called a Pukka Pad, which rather sounds like I’m only allowed to use it for comments relating to Jamie Oliver. However, it will do the trick for what I need.
This notebook, it’s a place of Lists. Move over Robert Crampton… I don’t have bike ride stats in (one of his Lists), but it does come in handy for noting what we’ve bought for people’s birthdays and Christmases, measurements of gaps that require furniture or shelves, that kind of thing.
I’ve also used it as a place to write a bit of a diary of what we’ve done on holiday, as it’s quite nice to remember where we were when, what we saw/did, etc.
The notebook also started out as an exercise in perspective. I started the first one in 2002, having come out of a difficult six months or so before, with the view that if I thought about life differently, it might well mean I felt differently about it.
In the dark days of November, and feeling a little low at the moment, it’s not bad thing to start the new book, with a sense that there will be good things in 2008. In fact, I’m sure of it – it’s one of the Big Birthday seasons that runs in both sides of the family every few years, when there’s various birthdays ending in 5 or even 0, so lots to celebrate.
Lists, notebooks, they are open to interpretation. You could see it as ‘all that stuff I did’, or ‘all those things I can’t manage, and feel bad about’.
I did have a separate task book, more reminders really, and have stopped using that – felt too bad at all the stuff that wasn’t happening at home, when in fact it was fine, and there was loads going on at work. At the moment, there’s a certain amount going on in both camps – for which three cheers.
But as the thirties move on, life blurs a little more, separate years are less distinct in the memory. It’s nice to note a few things, be clear where I’ve been at a certain stage in life.
Noting well, and noting the good. Thankfully the memory takes over, and helps shine up the good, down play the bad. The notebook helps us remember how it felt – and how much has happened since.