For anyone trying to find a good Christmas present for their scatter-brained, busy or perhaps entrepreneurially spirited gift recipient, please consider buying a pocket-sized spiral notebook. I, myself, had a few of these notebooks, one of which made it with me for the better part of three years. I wrote business ideas there, both the lame and the feasible, created to-do lists, grocery lists, reminders, etc. It was a nice thing to have, considering I was used to carrying a pen at all times in my front pocket.
I was reminded of this earlier this week when I found my old trust green spiraled notebook in my office. It was crumpled from being sat on and folded over its spirals so frequently - 200 pounds of manchild was not kind to it over the years. I glanced at the first few pages, and was surprised by how long I'd had the notebook - almost 4 years.
The entries (each dated at the beginning of a thought) started in early 2005 with business ideas and reminders. "Look into Aiwa MP3CD player for Accord. Wash Car. Kamikaze fantasy football - players draft a team, whoever has the most players with injuries at the end of the season wins." I'm not claiming they were great ideas, but they were ideas... and entertaining to go back and read.
I showed my wife a few of the ones I thought she might remember. The first was a note made in July of 2005 when Katie and I went to Austin, where I proposed to her. On our last day, I'd made a note of all the things we'd seen there so I wouldn't forget them (which happens to me by the time I get back from a trip). We'd forgotten a good bit of the things we'd seen and done there. On that same trip, we sketched out a preliminary list of the people we wanted to invite to our wedding over dinner at Cheddar's.
Several pages later, there was a list of songs that I'd asked Katie to write down for me to find for her to make a CD... that was when we'd just gotten Dish Network and discovered Sirius radio on the upper channels in our first apartment. The last item of significance was the sales number to the Legacy subdivision from the first trip we took out to North Bossier to see their model house. We eventually built my house out there (that was my house, the current house is Katie's house, and I get the next one as well... we have a system here people).
Looking back it was a good thing to have. Sure, I had lots of meaningless grocery lists, bad business ideas, and plans I never did get accomplished, but it sure was nice to at least be able to look back and reconstruct some of the more memorable moments of the last few years... similar to the function this blog performs.
Anywho, Katie and I were shopping tonight and having a hard time finding gifts for people who are always hard to shop for, so I thought I'd post a suggestion for the few people that read the blog that maybe someone who is hard to shop for would appreciate having a little notepad to put in their back pocket. Oh, and it's kinda useless unless that person normally has a pen.
Posted by Jordan at December 19, 2008 10:54 PM | TrackBack
