11 ideas for your empty notebooks

start collecting. get obsessed with life again. write it all down.

the thing about moments is that they are fleeting. they are so precious yet they only last a couple of seconds. they pull you in like the smell of freshly baked bread and wipe your mind clean of whatever thoughts you were holding and they allow you to stop and pause, sit with a clear mind for just a second, give you permission to inhale that scent of freshly cut grass, feel the warmth of fresh bed sheets in the winter, stare at the crescent moon with edges as sharp as your mind in the morning, watch as two butterflies tangle themselves up in play on a warm summer day. you let that moment run deep into your lungs and veins and out again, like a tiny reset, one of life’s ways of forcing you to acknowledge the beautiful planet you are standing on right now. it’s just part of being human.

so isn’t it so incredible that these moments can be malleable like soft clay, that we can stretch them out to be as long as time itself, that we can make them last forever if we just write them down?

writing isn’t just for the talented wordsmiths who can take a feeling and turn it into a mosaic; it’s for all of us. every scratch of ink on the page doesn’t have to be the most beautiful sentence ever written, the most innovative idea or the most stunningly realistic sketch, they just have to be yours. you just have to notice the beauty around you and care enough to savour each and every one of them.

because who are we if we don’t admire the very materials our bodies are made up of that surround us each day? who are we if we don’t acknowledge how lucky we are to be sitting wherever we are right now, feeling our chests rise up and down, making daily exchanges of carbon dioxide for oxygen with the trees that watch us on our commutes to work and to meet-ups with friends.

you could probably go your entire life without letting moments sink deep into the soles of your feet, etch themselves into lines on your face, darken your skin and expand your heart and soul, but i think that would be quite a boring way to live.

i know you have many notebooks that you don’t know what to do with. why not turn a couple of them into pieces of gratitude for being alive? they don’t have to follow a specific look or feel or aesthetic, they are yours. gratitude doesn’t have to look like journal prompts and set lists either. a sketch of your favourite tree will do, a line about the moon will do, an accurate written account of how that particular breeze in august felt will do.

here are some things you can do with your empty notebooks:

• field notes ~ for all the observations that make you pause

what was it about the sky today that made you stop and look just a little longer? was that particular leaf you just stepped on extra crunchy and it soothed something inside of you? why does that person sitting on their own drinking a cup of coffee outside that café look like something from a film you’ve seen before? write it down. and when you’ve finished this particular notebook, you’ve got yourself your own collection of what life means to you, what moments of life are important to you, the parts of life that stood out only to you, the bits about life that only you saw in that specific instance in that specific moment. two birds nuzzling on a powerline, a group of leaves creating a tiny tornado in the perfect cone shape for a split second, a rainbow caught on your carpet.

• record-keeping ~ for all your type-a personality needs

what was your mood today on a scale of one to ten? what did you eat? what did you do? how many pages of that book did you get through? write down a simple account of everything you did every day if you’re interested in keeping track of things. this is also a good way to improve your memory. what you ate for dinner and how many glasses of water you drank may seem a little dull, but they can also be little victories. if you’re trying to eat a better diet, writing down what you ate is a good way to keep yourself accountable. keep records of it all, stay in the present.

• half-finished stories ~ for all those fictional characters that can’t seem to leave you alone

the way a character tilts his head to listen to the girl he’s in love with but doesn’t know it yet, the perfect disaster at a dinner party where everyone secretly hates each other, the shocking whodunnit reveal, the backdrop of the moment when a character realises something devastating. all those little stories you have in your head that will probably never turn into full length novels, they deserve the page too. excerpts from books you’ll never write, bring those to the forefront and onto the page. they might lead to full-length novels, they might not. write them down anyway. create collections of fictional moments inspired by real ones.

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