Notebook disease.

I'm here! I promise I'm not dead, contrary to what anyone may say. Admittedly, I was never very good at keeping journals, and isn't this, in some way, a journal? Why, yes. Yes it is.

In a former life I was an English major. This may seem slightly improbable, given my lack of actual English skills, but there it is. I remember one grueling year in particular in which I carried 21 and 18 credits in two semesters, many of those credits being English classes. Medieval English, Creative Writing, Poetry, Shakespeare, you-name-it. In said courses, there seemed to be a conspiracy: without fail, my instructors would issue an assignment that would be carried through the duration of the semester.

Now, this is mandatory and will count for one quarter of your grade. You are to start a journal and write in it every week. One hour minimum. Don't even try to fake it. I can tell when my students sit in the Student Center a half hour before class and scrawl thoughts over hurried lunches.

I am, of course, paraphrasing.

Now, one journal is quite acceptable. But three or four at a time is, well, distracting. I had quite a time organizing notebooks on top of notebooks, leaves of paper stapled to one another, sometimes completely disjointed as one thought straggled into other classes' journals and polluted otherwise pristine bodies of work. I failed everything. Of course, I attribute my failing to the fact that I worked the overnight shift at the campus 7-11. But that is quite another story altogether.

This, more than anything else, infected a sense of loathing for journal-keeping. Until then, journals were something I kept when I felt inspired to do so. I'd start so many of them, in spiral bound notebooks (college-ruled of course), in uniquely bound hardcovers whenever I could get my hands on them, in Day-Runners, on scraps of napkin. And all of these things, after a few pages, were left unfinished. Random starts and middles of stories, erratic thoughts, things unsaid to people, lists of things to do, outlines for whatever great fiction I'd dreamed up, were left to die within the first 20 pages or so of every book I bought to write in.

I suppose it's because I have some kind of fetish for clean notebooks. I love notebooks. I love buying them. I have a dozen or so sitting on my shelf right now. Some stained with ink, some waiting for pen to first press into that stiff pillow of paper. I have notebooks of all sizes. I am currently obsessed with smaller notebooks; ones that could very easily be stuffed into one's purse for writing in later. And even though I have these thoughts of writing, more often than not, I let them sit in wait. In many of them, I've written a few pages' worth, only to justify my having them, but it makes no sense. I know this.

And here I am, staring at yet another unopened mystery on my desk. Green leather with a matching band to keep it closed, off-white paper. Sealed in plastic. For now.