New notebook anxiety

My super-galactic travelling friends, 

If you're anything like me, when you see a cute notebook while out and about you'll want to (and often do!) buy it.

If you do end up buying it, you'll usually be asking yourself that dreaded question...well, now what do I do with it?

You stare at it thinking, it's so pretty, I don't want to mess it up. You open the page, pen in hand, ready to put something in it, but what? A shopping list? Seems kinda boring. Doodle in it? But what if my doodles suck! Thoughts and feelings? Great idea, but your mind is currently blank. And so, you close the new notebook, pop it in a drawer, and swear you'll use it when you have a good project in mind. But one never comes along, and so it sits there never to be used, often alongside a graveyard of other notebooks you bought and couldn't get yourself to use either...

Notebook anxiety is something I think everyone has had at least once in their life, and it's so hard to get over. No matter how big or how small, how expensive or how cheap the notebook is, getting over making that first mark in a notebook you bought for no project in particular is a hurdle we don't always manage to get over. We worry that we're going to ruin our new notebook, and would rather keep it pristine than spoiling it. But you know what? Not using it at all is worse than messing it up, and I'll tell you why.

Everyone and everything has a purpose in life, and a notebook is no exception. Notebooks are there to be written in, doodled on, used to write lists, thoughts and feelings, measurements for those new curtains you're buying, scribbled on with a pen that's low on ink so you can use it to write on your friend's Birthday card, etc. A notebook is your life in spits and spurts that you can keep for memory's sake, or recycle when you’re done, so it has the chance to be remade into a notebook for someone else.

An unused notebook is a sad notebook. No thoughts, no ideas, no memories lay within, just blank, pristine pages crying out to be used (and if that doesn't convince you, then just remember that most notebooks, if you're careful, have a cover that you can easily take off. That way, you can use the pages within, and once you're done take off the cover and save it, or buy a notebook of the same size with a bland cover, take that one off, and replace if with your one instead!)

I decided to write this post as I recently bought myself a little set of notebooks

and it made me think about notebook anxiety as I suffer from it myself at times, so I thought I'd write this for others who get notebook anxiety in the hopes it might help them. I hope it does!

Now, if anyone knows how to get over using cute stickers anxiety, I'd love to hear it...