Commonplacing the Common Place Book
What can I learn when I jot down things that capture my curiosity?
I didn’t call a Common Place Book when I carried around a little notebook I was gifted in a stationery set I received for Christmas from my grandparents when I was 13ish. I didn’t learn about Common Place Notebooks until recently.
A Common Place Book is a tool for remembering the seemingly insignificant-but-interesting things that we’re likely to forget, and likely will forget, until we flip through the pages of the book in some future destination. Many of our favorite artists attended this practice.
As I skim the pages of my first Common Place Book, I see formative thoughts that imprinted themselves into my psyche.
“The way people treat me is a reflection of who they are, not who I am.”
There are few original thoughts in this little notebook of mine, but here’s what’s in it:
Favorite quotes; some from a book at my Granmary’s house, media, or magazine clippings.
Funny ideas like the 1990s edition of a “Deep Thoughts” calendar inspired by a Saturday Night Live sketch that hung in my room.
Lists of goals and wishes.
Potential girl and boy baby names, including the name of my daughter who would be born 20 years later.
Scrawlings from other teenagers. Some of my favorites are from my soul brother, Paul, who wrote in his distinct, quirky, handwriting. Other quotes are from a lovely theater friend, Thomas, who wrote in beautiful script, and I remember fondly even though we’ve lost touch.
Unlike the other childhood-into-teenage journals that I short-sightedly tossed decades ago, my first Common Place Book contained no secrets, so I was free to keep it with me and that’s the key. (I keep my unfiltered Morning Pages thoughts safe at home unless I’m traveling.)
Other successful attempts were tiny notebooks I kept in my car for capturing random ideas, to-dos, or learnings from podcasts or audiobooks. My phone’s notes app often fulfills this purpose but in a more action-oriented way–less whimsical and lacking the satisfying crinkle of a notebook page.
Regardless, I always feel the spark of curiosity when I return to their messy pages.
Today I am starting an experiment! My current Common Place Notebook is coming with me on a work trip and conference. I’m going to carry it around just as I did as a teenager, and rebuild the habit of capturing ideas for my future self.
Inside the front cover, I wrote Joan Didion’s passage from Slouching Toward Bethlehem, which I’m currently studying:
“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write - on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there ….”
What would you or do you write in your own Common Place Book?