Don’t you hate it
…when you *know* you’ve seen something a million billion times, and in fact you walk past it every day, but as soon as you need it, you can’t find it? If you’ve ever seen my apartment, you can probably guess that this happens to me all the damn time.
I sat down to write a post this evening, and after discarding one particularly horrible, easy-to-write but depressing-to-read idea*, I realized I couldn’t think of a thing to talk about.
This is not to say that I don’t *have* things to talk about—I’m coming up with potential blog ideas all the time, but since I never write them down, most of what ends up on Prepoceros either is the result of a chance triggering of memory or happens right here in my computer alcove.
About a year ago I bought a lovely little Moleskine** to deal with this exact problem (and to make my life more coherent in general—I see so many interesting things, only to forget them within hours). Though I’ve only used it sporadically since then, I’ve always thought of it as something the “ideal Natalie” would carry with her everywhere, jotting down names, new books to read, brilliant world-changing ideas, etc.
So when I went searching for a topic and came up empty-handed (empty-minded?), I decided to fetch my Moleskine and put it in my bag RIGHT NOW so I wouldn’t forget.
Now, I swear to you that I have seen this nondescript little notebook every single day since I moved here three months ago. I promise you (though I don’t know why you’d care) that it is sitting in some very prominent place in my apartment.
And yet.
I feel like I’ve seen it in a drawer, but it’s not in either one. I know it was behind my old CPU just a little while ago, but it’s not there either. I remember shuffling it around constantly in order to pile up unopened mail on the bar, but ten minutes of picking through every old marker and scrap of paper in the whole bar area failed to turn up any sign of my precious Moleskine.
I’ve even checked the non-obvious places like my nightstand, the bathroom drawers, and the top of the refrigerator. No dice. Frustration.
Perhaps I’m misremembering the seeing-it-every-day thing because this plain black square-ish object vaguely resembles so many other things in my apartment—phone charger, PDA, small books, camera tripod, computer cables—that I recall seeing its various attributes without ever having seen the object itself. Does that make sense? Does it sound like a complete load of pseudo-cogsci crap? (Hint: it is.)
Long story short, I can’t find the notebook. Looked and looked. Really, my apartment isn’t very big, so I imagine it’ll turn up eventually, especially if I, I dunno, clean up around here or something, but dagnabbit, I could’ve *sworn* I saw it on this very desk just the other day . . .
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* I cannot walk my dog at night any more without at least briefly considering death, meaninglessness, yada yada. After being pretty good about ignoring it for the last couple of weeks, I came close to totally losing my shit on tonight’s walk, and it was not at all fun. Ugh.
** Mine is the plain notebook, pocket size. I absolutely can’t stand writing on ruled paper. Gives me the ickies.
P. S. I did finish the paper, but not without a lot of unfocused staring into space and related time-wasters. It’s not pretty, but it’s done. I have an A in that class anyway—apparently the TA likes my writing.
As for the midterm, I spent all my time working on the paper and still haven’t cracked the book for the other course (nor have I, um, gone to any classes at all since the last test). I got a 70. The class average was 63, and my score put me in the 67th percentile. My 72 on the first test turned into a B with the curve, so I’ll have to ace the final (worth 50%) if I want a decent grade in this class.