I realise I’m I’m going to be late for work because of this post.

It’s been a while since I told a real story on this, so I thought I’d tell you the epic journey of my notebook.

To set the scene for this story, I feel that I must confess my fetish with notebooks. There are many tales of me walking innocently into a book store and exiting with a leather bound beauty under my arm and a desperate flurry of thoughts of what to write in it. There’s the famous case of a tanned leather notebook with soft beige pages that’s been sitting in my bookshelf for over two years because I can’t bring myself to write in it. It looks too good. It’s a good weight, a good size, and I know if I write on it I’ll just foul it up. Along side the infamous notebook stands seven other notebooks and sketch books. With one sole exception, none of them are finished. I just like having them. A lot. Hence the fetish.

(When asked what my top three things were in sex, I replied lacy lingerie, mild bondage, and notebooks. If they were ever combined I wouldn’t know what to do)

But there’s this one moleskin notebook I have that’s always kept in the right inside breast pocket of my leather jacket. It was given to me as a present on my trip to Norway a year and a half ago, and now it’s almost finished. I’ve budgeted in it and noted conversations down, observations, some private thoughts, and now it’s four pages to go.

I had a plan for this notebook. I was going to write in it and complete it on the very day that I started it a year before. But then, something happened. I lost it. Sadly. It fell out of jacket pocket during a lecture and I spent three days hiking round campus and asking anyone I could if they had it. I got a few strange looks from unwary students, but that was all I found. I resigned the loss of my precious notebook and started another one, one that a good friend had given my for a birthday or christmas (they’re so close that the memories mingle, I can’t tell the difference). I set out with this new notebook and grew fond of it with every nonsensical page that I wrote in it. There’s even a section where I compare a random man walking by to a walking sun for his yellowness. My old notebook was gone, lost, mourned, and then practically forgotten.

And then I got it back through the door. With a note.

Apparently a man named Stewie had found it in the lecture hall after I left and decided to keep it for himself (despite my name and address emblazoned on the first page). He had had this book for roughly four months, probably reading it and rereading it and learning all its contents. At first I felt slightly violated at someone reading my thoughts and knowing how much I earn/spend every month, but then I felt disappointed. This man, this Stewie, whoever he is, did not write a single thing within the notebook. Not one. There wasn’t even a score that a pen might have left from hovering too close to the page. The book was returned in its immaculate, somewhat battered condition.

So here’s my message to all you notebook finders out there. Please write something within the pages. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid or nonsensical or even midly threatening, just make it memorable. Otherwise the sotry of losing a notebook and finding it again will just turn into a long, boring, pointless blog entry. Much like this one.