Square

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I realized tonight, while hunting for a pen, that somewhere in the dusk of recent memory, I’d replaced my journals with planners. I’d had every intention of making a tidy square in tomorrow’s box that I could check off as soon as I bathed Maeby. But my epiphany gave me pause. I stopped. I took a mental inventory: on the wanting scale, how badly did I want to bathe Maeby, or rather, how badly did I want to write in my planner that I needed to bathe Maeby?

Performance at the Center

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I liked walking on the grates in the sidewalks in New York, and once I realized this, I instantly began searching for ways to make this observation into a metaphor: walking with a world beneath me, walking on top of shaky foundation? Nothing really fit, so I gave up and let it be simple:

I liked walking on the grates in the sidewalks. I liked sliding my fingers along the stone of the building next to me. I liked looking up, but I liked looking down too. I grew to appreciate my humidity hair.

It’s hard to verbalize what it is about the city that spoke to me so much. Maybe it was the creaking of the train or the hum of an intersection. Maybe it was the smell of bagels and cronuts and giant sticks of lamb rotating in a street cart. Or perhaps it was the subtle joy of meeting and visiting your soul people.

Our Festive Fourth

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I haven’t been terribly homesick since I got to Chicago, but today I found myself a little achey–not just from all the walking.

I missed Utah. I missed my Sugar House neighborhood parade. And I missed all the Republican Patriots! No one really sported the old Red White and Blue. I missed the local marching bands and the musics and the glow sticks and the kids with streamers on their bikes. I could not track down a single piece of salt water taffy.

The Redesign

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“Don’t put too much pressure on this next post,” Jeremy wisely counseled last night after correctly reading my body language. Sometimes it is downright irksome that he can read my thoughts before they are corporeal or even conceived. To him, I’m not just an open book—I’m an open book with big print, Braille underneath, and pictures on the side.

Curiously Blank and Mysteriously Pristine

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My name is Sierra Robinson. And I haven’t purchased a new blank notebook in two days.
Sponsors, I have a problem. I am easily swayed by indie cover art and blank pages (none of this college-ruled nonsense). I purchase blank notebooks like cartons of cigarettes. Something about them speaks to me. Maybe it’s the un-cracked spine. Maybe it’s those seductively blank pages. Maybe it’s the pristine whiteness of potential.
Whatever it is, I’m obsessed.
This is my current collection of notebooks:


See what I do to them? 


Check on the spine on these puppies! They’ve been written in, pasted in, and beaten into submission so much that their spine starts to splinter like crazy. And this is just the college collection. I have a whole bureau drawer + a whole 3’ by 2’ container chalk full of them back home (even though I never really understood the phrase chalk full).
Apparently, I have a lot of thoughts. And a lot of time to write them down.
While some of my journals (namely the injured spine journals) are a raging success, others are less successful. 

Take this journal for instance:

I agonized for minutes about whether or not I should purchase it. I scanned the list of potential uses for this journal. I weighed the pros and cons of this journal and I decided that I simply had to have it. I decided it would be of great use to me, whatever it became.

And then.

I blew it.

I wrote down my New Years Resolutions on the first page.

And now all this book can contain is lists of New Years Resolution, and it has ended up a wasted collection of tree. 



This is why I am greatly perplexed about this newest addition to my collection:

This little treasure came all the way from Europe just to be with me. It is from the Belle and Boo Collection and I highly recommend it. 

But it vexes me because… right now, it has so much potential to become the next great American novel.

It could hold my deepest darkest collection of intelligent poetry.

It could contain the cure to Cancer!

But I’m terrified, petrified, immobilized because what if… what if… this British journal becomes another house of New Years Resolutions??
WHAT IF I SINGLEHANDEDLY DESTROY ITS POTENTIAL?


Friends, cast your votes: What should become of this perfect little notebook? 

And remember: Please notebook responsibly.