Happy Pi Day!  Today is that day that number geeks, well maybe all geeks, get to sit around and see who can recite the longest run of pi’s infinite digits and then celebrate that  victory by eating pie, indulging in calories and the security that the ratio of  that round delicacy’s circumference to it’s diameter will always be a constant.  Though I am fascinated by numbers, my first love will always be words.  So in celebration of Pi Day, I began a new daily journal.  Maybe I’ll also nibble on my pen.

I have practiced the discipline of writing daily morning pages for nearly thirty years, three pages written first thing in the morning every day, primarily as stream of consciousness.  I could write endlessly on the power of this practice, but that is not the point of the post.  This is about the where you write, not what or why.

A few days ago I realized that I was about to fill my current morning pages notebook.  We were headed to CVS to pick up a prescription so I figured I could pick up a new one while at the drugstore.  I have never used fancy journals.  For all theses years I have written in old-school composition books, with their marbled covers and taped spines.

Only recently have I ventured beyond the black and white marble and embraced other colors.

I assumed that composition books would be a basic staple of the drugstore stationary shelves.  I was only partially correct.    The drugstore did have a big stack of variously colored composition books, but they were all wide-ruled.  I am a college-ruled kind of girl.  The wide-lined version of the composition book doesn’t provide enough room for my daily pages of brain dump.  (Every now and then, however, a gem emerges on the pages.  (This is why I keep writing.).  I will compromise on a lot of things, but line spacing is not one of them.  I continued scanning the shelves left and right, up and down hoping that I was just missing the comparable stack of college-ruled composition books.  No such luck.  I finally noticed a lone similarly-sized notebook ; it was lacking the characteristic marbled cover and taped spine.  Skeptically, I reached for it.

This lone notebook was an appealing dark blue, a mark in its favor.  Rather than the marble look, it had a more modern geometric pattern of lines and circles subtly printed in a slightly darker blue on its cover.  And instead of  stating the obvious, having “Composition Book” written across its front, the blue college-ruled notebook said “OPEN FOR BUSINESS” in embossed gold letters printed on its right hand side.  Fancy, I thought.  But what does that mean?

Does OPEN FOR BUSINESS mean that the notebook is a blank slate, that it is open for me to the pour the business of my heart and soul, the business of my life onto its college-ruled pages?  If so, that is a cordial invitation.  I felt like perhaps I could negotiate an amicable business deal with this particular notebook.

Or, maybe the notebook was being a little more assertive, giving me a command, OPEN FOR BUSINESS.  Like, get to work.  Stop procrastinating.  I don’t need a demanding notebook.  I’m tough enough on myself when I don’t take the business of daily writing as seriously as I should.  I don’t need a notebook to send me off on a guilt trip every time I sit down with it.

The point is that there is a big difference here between an adjective and a verb.  I don’t know which one the notebook intended.  All I knew at the time was that I needed a notebook.  This was the only college-ruled one CVS had.  My choice was simple, buy it or don’t buy it.

I then remembered that back over the Christmas holidays, I had made a fabric cover for my composition book/journal.  I wouldn’t have to look at its confusing OPEN FOR BUSINESS cover every day.  So I bought the notebook…and some peanut M&Ms just in case those gold embossed letters burned through my fabric cover and tried to drag me along on a guilt trip!

I said I wasn’t going to write today about the what or how of writing daily morning pages.  That may have been not quite true.

In addition to it being Pi Day, today is also Write Your Story Day.

You may think to yourself, “There’s nothing in my life to tell.” It will surprise you once you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and the words start filling the pages. Words have a way of triggering memories. They form a moment in time, and before you know it, there’s a story flowing from your fingertips. Even if you never share your tale, it can be an essence of who you are and where you’ve been.

This is how the chore of going to the drugstore to pick up a prescription turns into the story of buying a composition book that will  hold future stories.