Moleskins out of Mountains

One of the adjustments that my wife had to make when we got married was my proclivity to never throw anything away. Over the years I have gotten a lot better dealing with this sad fixation which is a positive aspect of marrying an opposite who has the added benefit of being kind and flexible and believes in taking her time in bending me to her will instead of the instant slap down. If I had married someone like me we would have ended up on one of those horrifying shows on HGTV where they come in and force couples to clean out a room (or maybe the whole house) piled high with stuff.

One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome was writing things on little scraps of paper and then building little hills of scrap paper on my dresser. In way of explanation, my mind is annoying in that it rarely sits still. I am constantly churning on several things, most random, some with a chance to evolve into a more concrete idea. I will admit that 99.5% of the things I mentally chew on are worthless but I can’t risk losing that rare .5% so I write a lot of thoughts and ideas down. Back in the early days of our marriage, I would tear a corner off a piece of paper, jot down the words or sketch out something and then cram the scrap into my pocket. At the end of the day, I might have assembled several of these and I would deposit them on top of my dresser. I always went back through them and, if remotely valid, would record it in a sketchbook or notebook but that was rarely in a timely fashion. I swear I tried to get to them within a week. Or two. Hope threw out more than one of those little piles before she fully grasped the concept that she was tossing out parts of my brain in the process and compromises were worked out.

Time and technology have helped me in this area. Sketchbooks got smaller and more portable, Moleskin came out with a tiny notebook that I can keep in my back pocket and the little scraps of paper disappeared. Well, not entirely. They have now morphed into blank books of all sizes, some filled with my ramblings, most only partially complete. They chronicle a lot of really bad ideas and doodles and it is an historical record of little consequence to anyone but me. At least they can fit on a bookshelf (or a box in the attic). I’m not saying that’s where they are, I’m just saying they could be. I said I was better, not good.