Mmmmmhmmhmmm.... Hot Grits.
Another thing I noticed when I started using the Moleskine: I stopped losing my trashy little notes. This isn't actually confined to the Moleskine, either.
There are three pieces of background information I need to disclose upfront before I go on:
1) I like to smoke
2) I love beer
3) I like fedoras
I used to keep a pen caddy on my desk and had a drawer full of cheap disposable pens. Likewise, I'd have several cheap disposable cigarette lighters all the time. In spite of this, it seemed like I could never keep any of them around, and of the ones that were there when I needed one, I'd find many of them empty or broken when I went to use them. Cheap pens and lighters just grow legs. You lend one to someone and you never see it again. Since they're cheap and ubiquitous, some people think nothing of walking off with them. Even if they do it accidentally, well, it's just a cheap plastic piece of crap, right? Why go to the trouble of returning it? If I'd lose it myself, I wouldn't go to the trouble of hunting it down, either. It's just disposable junk, so I'd get another 12-pack.
I got fed up one day when four consecutive pens I grabbed from my caddy didn't work. I threw them all out and got a couple decent Cross pens, one with a twist barrel containing blue ink, red ink, and a pencil; another I put highlighter refills into. I ditched the Bic lighters and replaced them with a decent Zippo. Nothing extravagant, just nice, and not cheap. I was resolved to use no more disposables. Only decent quality equivalents that are refillable and have enough value that I'd miss them if they vanished.
Guess what? I almost never lose them. I always have a reliable flame and writing instrument. If I lend it, it comes back. If I did lose it, I'd be pissed off, but since each of them cost around $50 (give or take 10), I really try not to and, with the exception of one of the pens, haven't in over three years. My working theory at this point is that honest people will return stuff that has obvious value. I, in turn, take care of stuff I like that costs more than a couple bucks.
When I took notes on odd scraps of paper I could never find them. Since I added a Moleskine to the mix (generally covered by the theory), all my notes are in one place and I keep track of it.
Every year in Brussels, there is a beer festival in the Grand Place. Brewers come from all over Belgium and pour some of the finest beer you can find on the planet. I like beer enough to take notes when I taste something new, so I grabbed a Moleskine I keep just for beer tasting notes, my pen, put on my Fedora, and headed over there. I know a little bit about beer. Enough to talk smack and sound convincing to someone who brews it for a living. I hit this one booth and the guy pouring started talking shop with me and I tasted one of their beers. I started jotting notes and had another. He saw me writing and asked if I was with the press. I answered back that I wasn't and asked him something about the styles of beer they brew, but it was loud and he didn't quite hear me. He gave a couple free beers and asked me to treat his brewery nice in my Style section article. I got mistaken for press at two other tents after that and just played along.
The only thing better than beer is free Belgian beer! Wouldn't have got that with a Bic pen, a baseball cap, and e-mailing notes to myself from my BlackBerry. Yeah, sometimes it pays to not look like the nerd that you really are.
