Homeless thoughts, thoughtless homes.

My thoughts are a little homeless at the moment; I’ve said goodbye to yet another companion, this one endowed with thick, luxurious covers marked and embossed in golden motifs, regal against a smooth, creamy red. Its pages were pre-aged for comfort and delightfully thick, carrying a certain soothing weight to them.

And the size. Perfect for the crook of an elbow or for tucking at your side. Ideal to hold one-handed, to hide from curious eyes, for writing on uneven surfaces.

The new one is a bit too large in comparison. My thoughts swim in a sort of emptiness, with no lines to bring ideas together, to give them any kind of sense. Just an endless ocean of blank pages; a sort of void. It feels like a stripped-bare apartment. No touch of home. No cosiness. Just four blank walls and a lot of space that I am at a loss at how to fill.

Incidentally, the new WordPress editor feels the same now. Too open, too vast. Too much white. I feel a little overwhelmed somehow by its design; sometimes, I find that I am grappling to fill all this blank space with something, to make this blankness disappear. All this space is intimidating. I need corners, nooks and crannies; places to hide, to burrow into. I need bumps and dents in which to tuck my stories, somewhere safe where I can keep my words.

But well, about the new notebook. It’s no surprise it feels so impersonal: it’s just a heap of neat, spiral-bound A4 pages and was originally a company notebook. It’s not faring very well in the creative writing business. Office notebooks aren’t good homes for daydreams and words that only make sense upside-down.

Yes, yes.

It all makes sense now.

So maybe I’ll downsize, who knows. And keep these white, blank pages to draw these colonial-style houses I long to put to paper.

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Note: While I am infinitely grateful for even having paper to write on and an internet connection to share this, I will admit to being a little bit of a notebook snob. It is what it is.

Listening to :