a commonplace book, and the vow inside it

 so I ordered a Rhodia hardcover notebook to use as my commonplace book of writing and craft, and I love the smooth, slightly heavier paper. I test drove a page written with one of my fountain pens, and it’s lovely and slick. I think I might just use fountain pens with it, since my other journal’s demanding ultra fine gel pens and tiny block printing and ugh

But I’m pretty excited about my commonplace book! I was going to take a picture of my first page, where I copied out a bit from big magic, where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about making a vow to write forever when she was 16, because it really stuck in my head, like it was something that I ought to have done at 16, what if I had vowed to stay close to writing, if I had realized that young that writing was what I would do forever? Where would I be now, if I had only known then?

But you know what? I didn’t know. I had...other things going on when I was 16, and I didn’t know what writing would really mean to me, and it took years to figure out that it meant something, and it’s only now that I know, sure as anything, that writing doesn’t just amuse me. writing is where I feel the most content.

And it would have been brave and magical and a little bit glamorous to be sixteen and make a serious vow to the universe to write forever...to vow to do anything forever, no matter what the outcome is. maybe it doesn’t have the same cachet, when you’re older and you know or at least have a pretty good idea what forever means, now that you’ve spent a great deal of your own share of forever already.

But I wrote the promise down today, and I mean to keep it.