Something sensational

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Just before I left uber gave me a really spectacular “Bon Voyage” gift: the passport sized Midori Traveller’s Notebook. I’d seen him link to the notebook before and was skeptical. “Really?” I thought. “It’s a notebook cover and you have to buy inserts and put it together yourself.”

Immediately upon opening it, however, I knew I was wrong, terribly wrong. Yes, it’s really just a cover and a hair tie so you can assemble various bits and pieces inside. That simplicity allowed me to create the little black Book of All Things that has replaced the Moleskine notebook I’ve been using for years.

I added calendar inserts (blank, so I could fill in the dates and waste nothing) and a zip pouch (immediately filled with postage stamps, my Irish SIM card, and an old pound coin), and figured out how to attach my pen so I’d only have to reach into my laptop case once when I was looking for it. It’s the right size to fit exactly in the spaces my Moleskine used to occupy, taking up only a little more space but holding so much more. In addition to the calendars I require to continue pretending to function as a human being, it held a blank notebook I used solely as a travel journal.

This wee booklet got filled in the month I was away. In a fit of organization I printed out my flight schedule and paper clipped it to the front cover of the booklet…after SFO I kept it as a quaint and charming reminder of how futile all that advance planning is when flying standby. Also as a way of showing people in a quick and succinct way the scope of what I was doing, even if the details had shifted with the tides.

Now that I’m back, the trip notebook has been replaced with another blank book and the calendars are filling up with the details of my normal life. I love my Midori with the fire of a thousand suns. The wee notebooks on their own would have been shredded by now in my aura of chaos, and a full sized notebook would have been unwieldy and wasteful. This incredibly simple scrap of leather and hair tie changes with my life perfectly, and it was a constant companion while I flew to and fro. Nearly everything in these trip blogs was handwritten into this first, so it’s only fair that I introduce you all to it before I continue on.

On Thursday I’ll tell you about New York.