Composed 4/14/16
Description: For Day 14 of NaPoWriMo. Can you believe it? I’m actually caught up! And I even have a poem stewing for tomorrow! Anyway.
Today I filled up the last page of my “creative” notebook: a small, lined book I usually carry around with me in order to scribble down ideas, lists, a few lines that pop into my head, or even complete poems.
This notebook became a way to write down and contain my ideas in an organized place; in other words, a way to avoid writing things down on “Scraps of Paper“: receipts, random loose-leaf, napkins, etc. (i.e. things that get lost easily). Usually these are first drafts that get transferred to a Word document where they’re edited and then (ta dah!) sent to you.
Anyway, I so rarely reach the end of any notebook that this is kind of a momentous occasion for me. The beginning of this notebook coincides pretty closely with my resurgence into writing and my beginning leap into poetry. Obviously, two-hundred-something poems later, it’s been a huge success.
So what do you do when you reach that last page? That thing that symbolizes so much time and hard work and even a new section of your life?
Well, you write an ode of sorts to it, naturally.
Last page
It’s taken awhile to get here
And I’ve seen too few of your kind
I hope to not disappoint
With these last few scribbled lines
Then again
It’s not the end
You’re more like a bookmark to me
This is only one small finale
The start of many beginnings
Still
I feel good
You’ve given me so much pride
So thanks for the memories
Thanks for the ride
I guess this is goodbye then
I’ll move on to something else
But I’ll always hold you high
Up on my bookshelf
Scraps of Paper 
There is something almost scary about starting a new notebook. Usually I have several, (hmm…now that I look over at my shelf I realize there are more than several) blank notebooks on hand. I like to make sure what goes in the notebook matches the look of the book. When I come to the end of one there is a satisfaction knowing every page was used.
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I have had that same fear! I always wanted what went inside a notebook to be “perfect.” However, I found out that if I tried to do that then I would NEVER fill a notebook. That’s why I got this one with the explicit intention that it would have all kinds of things in it; whatever I needed it for — lists, poems, story ideas/outlines, date ideas, whatever. I knew that nothing in it would be perfect; it was FOR scrap as well as pretty things. If I didn’t do that I’d get really frustrated and just stop using the notebook completely because I’d “mess it up.”
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I try to figure out what I want my notebook to be used for from the very beginning, but in truth, usually the first few pages stay with that idea. Then, the notebook morphs into something else.
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Yeah, that’s happened to me as well. I have just come to realize I am not very consistent lol
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