Paper

This is just a quick note of sorts, since I should be heading to bed. (Watch me turn this into a long and nonsensical piece of rambling bullshit, right?) Today I was at the symposium at TCU, and it was open to students and faculty of the nursing school, and there was this student sitting on the same row from me, a few seats down.

She was dressed like most students--jeans, T-shirt, backpack--and she pulled out this three ring binder, snapped it open, pulled out a few leaves of paper and got ready to take notes when the speaker came up. It was the paper that caught me--three-hole-punch, college-rule, beautiful paper. I don't think I've used paper like that since I got done with grad school in December 2006.

I'm a sucker for office supplies--especially pens (although I hate blue ink, so I guess that probably means I'm racist or hate babies or something) and notebooks. Seeing that paper made me think of the reams and reams and reams of notes or drawings or essays I've done on that sort of paper in the past. Today, when I go to get paper to jot something down, it's usually from a reporting notebook, torn out, or it's a sticky note or it's a blank sheet of white paper from the printer tray or something. There is no ruled paper like that anymore in my life. It made me sad and happy and nostalgic all at once.

Tomorrow I get paid, and I think I may stop by somewhere and buy a pack of paper and a little binder. Until just a few short years ago, that paper was the symbol of limitless possibilities. I'd like to bring that back into my life, I think.