Back-to-School Fever

I love back-to-school fever. It’s that feeling of renewal, anticipation and excitement.

Ok, I admit it : it’s the back-to-school notebooks and stationery displays that make me crazy for back-to-school. There’s so well stocked, and have so much variety compared to the rest of the year. That’s what gives me the fever part of back-to-school fever. I love the thought of a new notebook (or two or three), with lots of blank pages waiting to be filled, and the anticipation and excitement that come with that. But, for all my work to be mindful and not into material things, I really only tap into the excitement via the blank notebooks.

Things are of course a bit different now — back-to-school seems to start in July. As much as I enjoy earlier release, I do think kids should not have back-to-school telegraphed at them right after July 4. But then again I think it’s excessive that Halloween stuff started coming our August 10th where I live.

Ironically when I was in law school I had more back-to-school blues than fever. Falls in law school always came with an enormous bundle of stress included. Plus, notebooks in law school are all but obsolete at this point. The back-to-school displays didn’t even cheer me up for the most part.

All of this really hit home for me in 2005 — that’s when I finished my formal education foreseeably forever. Somewhere while studying for the bar exam, I became really ok with that, but I was still worried about Fall 2005. Would I get sad? Would I want to get an L.L.M. or a Ph.D.? Would I miss school?

As it turns out, no to all the above.

I didn’t miss anything about formal schooling, and and I reconnected with that giddy fall feeling of new notebooks and renewal and more writing and that wonderfully crisp new notebook with lots of blank pages.

As much as I try to be mindful, this feeling of reconnecting came after I had a notebook binge while shopping at a very well-stocked Target in Pennsylvania with my friend Lynne. I think I bought NINE notebooks, which is a lot even for me. But the giddiness kicked back in.

This year I discovered a great new brand of notebooks that is wonderfully eco-friendly named greenroom eco. The two in the picture just screamed fall to me in a very inspiring way. They are at Target but sadly not online as far as I can tell. The picture above is the duo I picked up for the coming months. I am always trying new things with my journaling and lists and writing. Sometimes it all goes into one big notebook that invariably becomes too heavy or too full. Oh, and by the way, collaging every other page of a composition book will seriously make it heavy.

Sometimes I have notebooks for different things, and I am leaning back towards that after several months of having an overstuffed journal/collage book/inspiration/writing/lists notebook that is beautiful, but just not practical.

The two green room eco notebooks above are going to be for constant carrying around in my purse — the large one is for journaling and impulsive writing moments, while the smaller one is a book of lists. I will still have other notebooks I keep at home (including a large inspiration via collages book I just began) — but these two little notebooks are going to be my constants.

Happy Fall!

Picture by City Girl.