Moleskine Cahiers

I’ve offi­cial­ly retired my old note­book, the one I’ve been using since 1999. Starting in my first year of uni­ver­si­ty, it went every­where with me. Long trips, short trips, camp­ing, in the bath, you name it. I even includ­ed it on my list of what I was bring­ing to Hong Kong. It’s filled with so much ran­dom­ness: doo­dles, code, thoughts, quotes, lyrics, bad poet­ry (my own, of course), lists, ideas. One day, I’ll scan them in and doc­u­ment them.

But alas, it’s full.

Moleskine cahier

As a replace­ment, I bought a set of three Moleskine Cahiers. They’re thin­ner and lighter, which is exact­ly what I’m look­ing for; it took me over eight years to fill my last one, and I did­n’t need some­thing that would last that long.

I do have sev­er­al pock­et size Moleskine note­books scat­tered around the house and in var­i­ous bags for use in sit­u­a­tions such as rid­ing the bus, but those are rather dif­fi­cult to write in unless sit­ting at a desk due to their small size.

These cahiers are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. From the insert:

THE MOLESKINE CAHIERS are jour­nals with heavy-duty card­board cov­er, in black and buff with vis­i­ble stitch­ing on the spine. The last 16 sheets are detach­able and there is a wide pock­et for loose notes.

The pages have a delight­ful­ly smooth feel to them, and absorb ink with­out bleed­ing. I’ll be keep­ing one in my back­pack, one in my shoul­der bag, and one in my cam­era bag. I need them now more than ever.

There’s so much to write and so lit­tle time.

2 comments

  1. I love Moleskines!

    The only prob­lem is that I write with a spe­cif­ic pen (Zebra ball­point F‑301 Fine Ball Point), and ball point ink does not work well on this type of paper, so my hand­writ­ing changes from how it nor­mal­ly looks on nor­mal grain or col­lege ruled paper. :( I usu­al­ly car­ry around the most adorable Asian note­book I find in Japanese or Korean papieries (sp?)/stationers and try to fill that before I go on to the next cute book.

    My prob­lem is that most of the time I write ran­dom things in it. Observations, shop­ping lists, address­es to map, direc­tions, etc, rather than true, real writ­ing.

    PS. I am rebelling. I went to the site view on my RSS feeds, so I could read and com­ment. Your site is the one I read the most!

  2. I have my favourite pen too: a Sanford uni-ball ONYX micro point.

    I nev­er do any true, real writ­ing in my jour­nals either. I find that it’s too hard to write long, coher­ent things, because I often go back and revise. Journals are great for ideas and the begin­nings of entries.

    All the lit­tle details you include are a great time­stamp, a moment in your life when you need to write your dai­ly shop­ping lists, address­es, etc. It becomes more of a diary, even though you may not mean it to be so. Never throw them out when they done.

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