I thought this book was naught but blank white lines
I thought I had as much time as I pleased
to fill its space with all of my designs —
my words, my thoughts on what my fancy seized.
Instead, tonight, I see it, pull it out.
Was it a gift, forgotten on my shelf?
Some tote bag swag, some cannot-live-without-
-it impulse buy I picked up for myself?
Alas, the lines are claimed by months and days.
A planner — week by week it marches on
through last year, this year, ending in its ways
too soon. November’s almost come and gone.
And so, this lapse makes beauty into waste.
A useless jewel — time cannot be erased.
Photo: The “blank book” which turns out to be an 18-month diary. You would have thought I would have glanced at the cover before stashing it away, waiting for inspiration to strike…
Occurrences like this are the reason Gretchen Rubin says to spend out. I have a tendency to save things too long.
@Carrie – exactly. I was saving it for the right thoughts to write in there, and never noticed it was a calendar. For an 18-month period that’s 17 months gone! Ah… spend out. I hope you had as good a Thanksgiving as possible.
FWIW, I use a Moleskine 2009 planner to write my morning pages in, because I just couldn’t go back to using a paper planner after discovering the wonders of Outlook in 2002, even though the Moleskine was so pretty. Now I just free-write over all those little boxes.
Love the sonnet 😀
@ARC – I’ll probably wind up giving the planner to my kids to play with and draw on. But that would be an interesting idea, to simply write on it anyway. Maybe it would kill the inner perfectionist! (Not that I really have one).
And thanks — sonnets are like crossword puzzles. Just challenging enough to be fun.