At one time in my life, there was a place called Border’s Bookstore. At the front of the store there was the stuff they were trying to pawn off to impulse buyers. The way my brain is wired, I never know what I want until I see it, so I was super-susceptible to this ploy.
In this bargain bin of chaos, there was always a selection of fantastic looking notebooks. My brain would zoom off into the future of an ultra specific use I would have for this notebook or that notebook. And then I would get home, and stall. The first page had to be perfect. One flaw and it would mess up the whole notebook and dishonor this new treasure. So, I would put the notebook down. And, because of my ADHD, I would soon forget it existed.
Time would pass and we would be having people over to hang out, to party, or watch record a podcast. So, I would scoop up the newest pile of notebooks and shuffle them off to a back room and place them in a growing pile of other long forgotten notebooks.
I would be searching for a planner and the sidebar of my browser would be filled with notebooks. And I would purchase them. And, I would try to coordinate my notebooks with the use of my new planner. But, I couldn’t put all the stuff into one notebook. I had a notebook for rap bars (no one would ever hear), stand up jokes (that I would never perform), blog ideas (I would never write), work projects (that I would never go back and reference).
I take fantastic notes, and from time to time, I have written some fantastic stuff. But when I read them, I am surprised that I wrote them. I don’t remember writing any of them – I can not pick up where I left off and finish any of the rap songs, the jokes, the blogs, the projects, or the notes to remind me to read my notebooks.
I want to be a writer, and entertainer, a productive member of the work team, but I am stuck in waking up each day with very little memory of the thoughts I have recorded. When someone asks me to “take care of something”, I jump up and I take care of it. They often insist that I don’t have to do it “right now”, but I argue that I do need to do it RIGHT NOW, or it will never get done and my brain can picture three weeks from now and the thing not being done and the disappointment inside the mind of the person that asked me to take care of the thing. And, I feel that disappointment, and I don’t like it. So I avoid it by doing the thing RIGHT NOW.
Stacks of Notebooks
I have stacks of unfinished notebooks that contain daily notes to my children and significant other. They are filled with fun facts, inspirational stories, quotes, anecdote, antidotes (recipes), and Anti-Don’ts… (Like, “DO what makes you happy” and “DO enjoy the things you enjoy” and “DO BE YOU!” (Doo-be-doo-be-you)
I don’t remember what inspired the thoughts. I can’t recreate the process I went through to get the pen onto the paper. And the sad thing is, some of it is really entertaining and satisfying. I wish I could take credit for it, but to me, someone else wrote all of that.
And, that is something that has hindered my ability to write a novel. I tried in earnest at one point. But once I lost moment, I lost all ability to connect to the story, so it has sat dormant for a very long time.
But, at least I have created a giant pile of Easter eggs for some future archeologist who will have a lot of goofball writing to sift through in a thousand years.
