I received an email this morning with the subject line: “Austin, you’re invited to re-live the mid-90s.” In 1996 I was 13, living in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio, and my parents were getting a divorce, so as crummy as everything is now, HARD PASS. (Above: my middle school notebook, circa ’96.)
Samesies
My notebook vs. my father-in-law’s, left out on the kitchen table.
Seeing the two side-by-side reminded me of a few months ago when I was visiting my dad and he pulled out a logbook — I had no idea he kept a notebook:
Paper monuments to human effort
One thing I love about working on paper is that you literally end up with these gigantic piles of your effort. (Evidence of your days.) At some point, I started collecting photos of other people’s paper output.
It strikes me how much these paper stacks look like buildings or skyscrapers… paper monuments to human effort…
Open every day of the week
The art of contextomy: you cut some words off a pizza box, tape them to the cover of your diary, and they become an imperative. A commandment!
Speaking of diaries, the 5-year-old’s diary is becoming way cooler than mine:
A follower on Instagram asked me how they should get their kid to keep a diary. I think in most situations, the most important thing is to model for your kids what you’d like them to do, first. Owen sees me cutting things up and glueing them into my diary every morning, and he always wants to look at my notebook, so one day I (as casually as possible) asked him if he’d like his own special notebook to keep a diary in. That’s how he got started. So: model, see if there’s interest, and then offer up the time, space, and materials.
Inspiring diaries
I’m devouring Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies right now. My only gripe with the book is you don’t get a sense for how wonderfully visual his notebooks were.
More inspiration came this morning, courtesy of my 5-year-old’s diary. (Everything on that page after the words “as usual” is invented.)
I keep a huge file of inspiring notebooks on my tumblr, which I relied on when making The Steal Like An Artist Journal. Here’s a slideshow talk I gave a few years back with some of the highlights:
See also: Diary of a 5-year-old.
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