Posts
Like many an angst-consumed undergrad before and since, I carried a journal with me at all times during college. It was exclusively the Ampad 8x5 80-page Single Subject Notebook. Nothing else would do. 
Into the Ampad, I scrawled stream-of consciousness meditations on melodrama, depression, broken heartedness, tirades directed at friends, and other timeless themes of youth. I filled it with never-sent letters to fickle college boys. I filled it with obsessive, cartoonish illustrations of common objects. I filled it with names and phone numbers and addresses for employers who never hired me and houses that never rented me a room. 
The Ampad notebooks were all purchased from the bookstore at my university. When I finally graduated and moved away, I could not locate the nondescript, green-covered Ampad 8x5 notebooks anywhere-- and I looked everywhere. Sure, there were Ampad notebooks, and 8x5 notebooks, and single subject notebooks with narrow rules, but none of them were all of these things at once. It may be no coincidence that I stopped writing in journals not long after college.
15 years later, I found it once again: the Ampad 8x5, sitting innocently in a great, abundant stack in another university bookstore 800 miles to the North. 
I purchased several at once. But at this point, I was married. I was a mother. I had worked in corporate America for 10 years. I hadn't written in a journal since I was a semi-nomadic, underemployed college town romantic with literary delusions.
What would I say? 
reflections on Bond Day
4 hours ago
9 comments:
Well, you should at least start off with some red and blue ink drawings of cat super heroes and Lava Lamps! Those are great sketches, BTW. They capture your mindset, and the atmosphere of a now-gone era. Er, maybe "era" is a bit dramatic, makes you sound old. Sorry.
On a related theme, in the late 1970s I served in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club (that's the USN) and discovered microcassette recorders at a base exchange in the Philippines. I still have a box of old tapes, that still play with the same degree of "quality" (telephone quality sound.) It's fun to hear my voice from 35 years ago.
~Joe
I say more doodling. Doodling is good for the brain.
Except the cat, Make the cat stop looking at me.
Also consider bad poetry, storyboards for a screenplay, games of hangman, microscopic battle scenes between human and robots (a favorite of mine), and hundreds and hundreds of random geometric shapes.
Mike, I'd like to see some of your robot battle scene doodlings. Sounds fun.
~Joe
Word verification: "jaucre". Merce jaucre!
I vote for the bad poetry. Sheets and sheets of it. You'll need to recreate a little angst, though, and find a really cheap ballpoint pen.
Those were the days, huh?
Maybe you've read Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones." She has a great writing prompt: write "I remember" at the top of your page... and then continue writing.
Mine is: "I heard myself say..."
Perhaps write about how/why your perspective has changed since your last spiral notebook journal.
And my college friends wonder why I journal.
Notebooks that you used are like a time capsule, a record of what you were thinking and doing and what you thought was important at the time.
It's nice to see that you kept your old notebooks. I suggest you date your new ones, and start journaling again. sketch, write poetry, write about your kids. A similar entry on another blog, The Art of Manliness mentions the transcribing of a father's journals into text documents--and in doing it, how much the deceased father "taught" to his son and wife through journals that he kept while he was alive.
Very few people keep a daily account of their lives anymore. We're all too busy looking to the future to record the present.
Nice entry. ^.^
What would you write about? Something of a rhetorical question, but I'll answer anyhow. ;-) You could start off by telling the story of how you found these notebooks again. And then...well, whatever comes to mind! Write about making a paper wallet for your daughter, write about your crazy co-workers stacking paper cups, write about the ridiculously hot weather we've had, or what you think of current news and politics, or the music you're listening to or the book you're reading.
I've kept journals off an on since I was little, and they've been different things at different times. Sometimes they're ridiculously detailed accounts of my daily doings (especially during times when I'm dying to write fiction or poetry but have nothing to say): "Got up at six-thirty, and now I'm sitting here drinking Tully's coffee with half-and-half, mindlessly tossing Tam's ball for him, and thinking about making pancakes with blueberry sauce..." Other times they're a bunch of ranting about frustrations with family or co-workers, or planning on paper, or soul searching, or pages of poetry and critiques of said poetry, complete with doodles (mostly flowers or other plants...it's what I do). It's your journal. You bought and paid for it. Anything goes!
Love the lava lamp!
I think you all are right, I should just go ahead and put **something** in there.
I printed thousands of Ampad notebook covers like this. I always wondered who was buying them. I hoped that the product that I was making would help people to learn and grow.
I worked there for nineteen and a half years. I worked as a printer for fifteen years then one day they were not sure if they had a job for me there "they" were going to move it to Mexico. I left the company in 2005. They just announced that Mattoon IL facility will be shut down in 2011. We need to stop this job sucking problem so that the youth of the future your kids and my kids can have jobs and have a future! All the college degrees in the world won't help you get a job if they are somewhere else!
Post a Comment