blog
you don’t need a notebook system
What’s up with our obsessive desire to make life feel rigid?
We take soft things and fence them within parameters, schedules, regimes. Mornings become a “morning routine,” daily habits get tracked on a chart, reading wishlists become a “syllabus”.
I’m talking to a certain kind of person here. Put your hand up if you are a:
former high school over-achiever
stationery addict
eldest daughter with a Muji pen collection
retired bullet journal devotee
Hi. I am one of you.
Something I’ve noticed lately is an uptick in conversations around “notebook systems,” or “ecosystems” which promise ways of organising thoughts, ideas, to do lists, collages, reading notes, morning pages, into a series of different notebooks. Perhaps there’s even conversation between notebooks, where passages or items get copied out and logged in different places.
I get the appeal. One notebook for this, one notebook for that. I too am a woman who believes that a notebook with just the right page density and spine flexibility might change my life’s trajectory.
But every time I sit down to watch a youtube video or read an essay about someone’s “notebook system”, I never end up using it. I just bask in the idea of a perfectly organised life.
[Homer Simpson voice] Mmmmmm… idea of a perfectly organised life.
So let me offer an alternative:
Let it be messy.
My favourite art teacher, Lynda Barry, asks her cartooning students to use a composition notebook on a daily basis. She tells them to put anything and everything in there. Her list of “greenlit” categories for composition books include the following:
Diary entries
Drawings
Dreams
Doodles
Shopping lists
To do lists
Daily comics
Spirals, shapes
Fears and anxieties
Quotes
Class notes
And it goes on and on.
Sometimes I wish I could separate my life into categories. But so often, things run into each other:
you write down a name whilst on a phone conversation and then start doodling a picture
you go shopping for groceries and think up a poem in the aisles
you meet a friend for coffee and end up talking about your job hunt
Life isn’t always easy to separate and catalog. So why do we insist on it?
I have a notebook which I tried to wrestle into a category. First it was a bullet journal. Then it was a manifestation journal. Then it was a daily diary.
Then I stopped asking it to be something specific, and just let it be.
It’s ok to not have a system for your, uh, stationery. Your life will be just as good if you write your to do list on diner napkins. You can fill up a blank page however you want. You can stick in bus tickets and write in ugly to do lists or phone call doodles. You can make a mind map on one page and then write a poem for your dog on the other.
Consider this your permission slip to loosen your grip on the things which make life fun.
Allowance
Sitting on the train, early morning commute. I forgot how bleak it is to get up and leave the house at 6:30am.
This morning I’m thinking about fitting in creativity to the new shapes of my life. I’m currently in an in-between period, where I’m in between houses, in between cities, and will be job-hunting in earnest, too.
I am still working on these projects:
Album 2
My Patreon
????
I do feel like I am interested in moving back to an “older internet” way of doing things. Sending emails. Writing blogs. It just feels like what I’m drawn to, and what other people are drawn to as well. I currently find myself spending hours on an Instagram carousel post to only have a fraction of my audience see it. And for what???
The people making money on Instagram are telling you that’s where you need to be. But I don’t feel like that’s “it”. I do just wonder where is the best place to connect with people who would like my music?
Am I putting enough of my music out there for people to sample and enjoy, though? Or am I still a bit ashamed it’s not “good enough” and am waiting for the next project to be finished so I can showcase more current work?
Asking these questions out loud might help me figure it out.
I’m posting to my website blog again because I’ve really been enjoying seeing how other people do it. I’ve set up an RSS feed on my laptop. There’s just something simpler about it and you feel in conversation with yourself. You’re surrounded by context. Whereas on Instagram or other social media you have to get the context out on the page every time you post. You’ve got to tell your whole story in 3 seconds, which then takes away some of the nuance, quietness and meaning of your work.
I want to post online and let the work build up. I want to paint a picture and a flow from a succession of things.
What I’m really toying with is the idea of quitting Instagram for all of 2026, as an experiment. This kinda frightens me because I want to do another crowd finder this year, and Instagram was surprisingly useful and getting some pledges last time I did it. But I just feel like my creativity and headspace will be the better for it?
Am I allowed to do that, I ask myself?
