when I wasn't looking.
All of a sudden this morning, I was researching commonplace books. I had heard the term for the first time maybe a year or so ago. I remember being highly intrigued and writing about it on Livejournal. Sort of a mixture between a journal/research notebook that was particularly a forte of the well educated in centuries past. But I forgot all about it. I think I rationalized away that however titillating the idea, I knew I wasn't the type of person to carry around a notebook to write down random thoughts or try to capture something observed on paper. I tend to just acknowledge things in my own mind and move on.
But this morning, I was suddenly researching commonplace books. I don't even know how I saw the term again, but I know I saw it somewhere and just like that, I was fully immersed in trying to figure out how I might go about something like that. That kind of spontaneous inspiration isn't to be ignored.
Some kind of handwritten notebook was out of the question. I get writer's cramp too easily. And plus, there's no reason for me to carry a notebook around because I'm home way more often than not. I'm pretty much at my computer most waking hours of the day, so I started researching using Evernote, which is an app that I've used for a few years, though I use it mostly to store documents, which I can also do with Dropbox, so I sometimes I wonder what I really need Evernote for. I did try to organize work on it, but once I got a different app for that, I didn't need Evernote for work.
So, I considered starting thinking of Evernote as a commonplace book, and gradually reformatting it as such, but that didn't feel very satisfying. I don't like the long vertical list of notebooks I already have, and how far down I have to scroll to find what I want at the moment.
And then it hit me. I already had the Microsoft product OneNote on my computer and had never used it, since I had Evernote. Another hour or so of research, and I was convinced that not only would OneNote give me a fresh start for a commonplace book, but I loved the pseudo ring-binder layout of it much more than Evernote's layout. So, without even needing to buy anything, I had my commonplace book. After watching a few short vids to get the basics down, I was ready to roll.
So, I'll see what happens. I like this blog as a way to express my organized thoughts, usually about a particular thing or flow of things of a similar subject. I like the idea of a commonplace book where I don't feel like my thoughts have to be organized in order to jot something down. Since my computer or phone is always readily available, it shouldn't feel like an effort. It's a matter of getting into the habit.
I love being inspired, especially when I don't even know why.
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