Today I went on a long adventure to find one of my favorite things in the whole wide world: an empty notebook.
Every day for the past six months, I’ve sat down and written three pages of whatever is on my mind. (Also known as Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way.) Sometimes it is dribble (see the entry titled “blahbibidy blah blah”), sometimes it is so profound it changes my life’s course (see the entry titled “I think I need to leave Oregon to write my next book”), usually it is somewhere in between. Always it makes me feel present, sane and whole.
While I feasted on salty carnitas at lunch today, I filled the last page of my current journal with a detailed and exciting six month plan to get this novel I’m working on to my agent so she can get it a publisher. It felt amazing, finishing my first ever Morning Pages journal with such a loud, exuberant bang.
Problem was, I now didn’t have a journal. In the States, I would have known exactly where to get one, but in this little rural Mexican town I had no idea where to look. I tried the OXXO (like a 7-11), the two tiendas, the mercado, all without luck. Then I came across an old lady selling random household goods on the side of the rode next to a coconut and ice cream stand.
Señora, usted tiene cuadernos? I asked hesitantly in my Spanish that really should be better than it is considering I grew up on the border surrounded by it.
Sí, she replied and handed me a red, college ruled, semi-used notebook. It was perfect. I thanked her profusely and she looked at me like I was some insane American who got excited over ridiculous things like boring half-used notebooks, which I am.
Tomorrow, I get to wake up to an empty journal and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. The possibilities of what will happen as I fill these pages are endless. The last one took me up and around and spit me out and over and because of it I ended up here, in Mexico working on my new novel.
Don’t you just love the life changing potential of a blank piece of paper?
