Various Bits of Paper

Beside my computer, there’s a stack of business cards.  Doesn’t matter what’s on the front–on the back are various notes and thoughts jotted down whilst on the road or in a restaurant or a bookstore.  There’s an envelope from one of my bank accounts on which I’d tracked a few payments.  There’s the current manuscript-in-progress, with notes.  Junk mail whose envelopes have become important.

I have a journal.  I have notepads.  I have dozens of places on which I’m supposed to write notes.

Yet somehow, I still end up with countless scraps of paper, torn bits of napkin, and post-its all over the place.  One of my cigar boxes is filled with story-thoughts and/or story-ideas on slips of paper.  (I don’t smoke cigars, but I like cigar boxes, and I have about a half dozen, though not all of them have yet found a use.)  There are even notepads which have been through the wars.  One has about six sheets of paper in it; the other sheets have been torn away and discarded as they reached the end of their usefulness.

The strangest thing is, somewhere in this system, there’s something that actually makes sense to me.  I can follow it.  I use it.  Whenever I’ve tried to narrow things down to a single day planner or something of the like, it’s inevitably devolved into a collection of scraps papers and the backsides of business cards.

Which, I imagine, is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.