When I was little, I would collect the prettiest stickers I could find. I would keep them as little mementoes or souvenirs, something small and shiny, but tangible, from a moment long gone. A holographic sticker of the Eiffel Tower from my first trip to Paris, for instance, or a puffy-shaped sticker of a cat from a cafe in Bangkok. But I would never stick them on anything. I loved them so much that I couldn’t commit to one surface — I was saving them for the best, biding my time, waiting for the perfect something to arrive. But then the years went by, the stickers were lost to moving boxes, never opened from their packaging. It seemed that nothing worthwhile would ever show up.
The year I turned twenty-five, I visited Berlin. Tucked at the end of a flea market, an artist sold gorgeous hand-bound soft-leather notebooks. I selected a sea green one with a neon orange band around it. I had my initials imprinted in the corner in neat font: NC. I told myself I would make use of it, I’d scribble my ideas down. It was so glorious, fresh and untouched that I never wrote in it.
That was over two years ago, and now it collects dust in a box with several other notebooks that I can’t muster the courage to write in. I keep waiting to write something groundbreaking, something profound enough to warrant dusting the pages in messy writing. I bought a pen in a stationary shop in Japan when I was twenty-one. I’ve kept it tucked away in a pencil case full of beautiful pens I can’t bear to break the seal on. One day the ink will dry up and it will be just another thing I randomly keep.
I’ve just returned from a trip to Korea where my main purchases have been an array of pens and several quirky stickers. I’ve stacked them together in a neat plastic sleeve with my notebook, but then there’s this nagging, sinking feeling that I could wait till tomorrow or the next day or for whatever day that I define as perfect and never arrive at that destination. And suddenly, it’s five years later and all I’ve done is give myself some form of delayed gratification.
And I can’t live like that anymore. I keep saving these items in hopes I will feel worthy of using them. And I don’t even know why I’m doing it. I’m older now, it’s July, the year is halfway over, and I don’t think the right time is coming. I don’t know if the right time even exists but instead, it is what we make of it, it is decided by us and not by some magical transformation in time.
I was reminded of this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer:
“Instead, therefore, of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or of giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; that the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations.”
So I’m taking Arthur’s advice, I’m pulling out the new notebook. I’m pressing open the first page, inhaling that new-paper scent and settling for the messy handwriting. Perhaps, alongside perfectionism, waiting around for the right time is something that only exists in my head.
When my father died, I found a stack of unopened notebooks in his office. All the words he left unwritten, I thought. That’s when I started using all the pencils I’d collected from my trips to museums.
I can relate to this in such a big way, Natalie - I have many unused notebooks. I'm the same with sketchbooks, too, but am really pushing myself to just 'play' in my latest one and not feel the pressure from it. So far, so fun!