The Need To Create

I keep a small book in my desk drawer, a tiny little thing. It's a green composition book measuring 4.5 inches x 3.25 inches. Four lines on the cover stand blank, waiting for a title, a name, a label.

Inside this tiny book are 80 sheets blank sheets, 160 pages of blue lines, front and back, all neatly glued together into stiff black spine that, over time, will crumble and release page after page into the wild.

I should write in the book, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to write in the book for a few reasons, the first being that nobody's going to read what I write. I'll be the only one to read it; but then again, I never really go back and read anything I write. If I do want to put something out there for someone to read I'll post it here, on my blog. Otherwise, what I write will get lost. In a book. In the drawer in my desk.

So why do I keep the book, then?

I suppose I could use the book to jot little things in: to do-lists, ideas, questions, notes of conversations . . . no.

The book is an important reminder of my need to create, to write.

My bookcase and dressers contain piles of notebooks I've filled in the past, but where do those ideas go? They hibernate in darkness, rubbing off on one another, carrying silent dialogues among themselves making the same tired arguments to one another until the ink fades, or pages falls out, or I die and someone finds them and reads--then like fireflies, the words drift up on their release and disappear into the ether.

But this little book--each time I see it I am reminded that I can write. I should write.
And I will write.
And I do.