On Keeping a Notebook
By Veronica Eklund
“But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’”
—Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” 1934–2021
“Watch the sunrise, go on a picnic, have a day in the city” are just some notes I have under my “Summer ’23” bucket list that I made on June 3, 2023, the day after graduation. I scroll to the bottom where I update my note, “10/23 complete.” It is now September. Was I really expecting to complete all of these tasks? Were some of them even realistic? What were the odds that I would actually travel out of state to go fruit picking? I’m sure I saw the flaws of this list when making it, but the optimism I had once school was over temporarily blinded me.
Here is what it is: I knew that the summer before college I wanted to spend as much time with my friends before we went our separate ways. Of course, these plans don’t always work out. Before I knew it I was eating lunch on a hot summer evening in August and I had less than half the list complete. Now, one friend is in London, the other in Connecticut, and I remain in New York. Was I disappointed? Was I expecting this outcome? A little bit of both.
Sometimes, change can be uncomfortable and hard to deal with. It’s hard for me to come to terms when certain aspects of my life are suddenly not how they have always been. “You can’t make shortcuts,” a mother explained to her child. The child seemed to be in second or third grade, and the mother was talking about how when approaching math problems, you can’t make shortcuts because then you will make a mistake. This simple message stuck with me all day because it reminded me that I have enough time to accomplish my goals and that I do not need to rush through life.
The same excitement I feel now as I prepare myself for this new chapter of my life, college, I felt as a thirteen-year-old finishing middle school. At that age, I was completely fixated on the idea of keeping diaries. I would, without fail, write down everything that happened to me almost every day. I would pick out my favorite gel pens and use a different color each day. On January 12, 2019, I wrote in my diary: “Did I also tell you we get our high school acceptance letter on Wednesday? I can NOT wait any longer . . .” I can see how immature I was as an eighth grader, and it’s slightly embarrassing.
I believe I stopped keeping a diary once I was in high school. I guess I figured I didn’t have enough time, or I just became less interested in what was occurring in my daily life. Maybe I stopped paying too much attention, or I didn’t think anything memorable was going on. Was I worried about judgment despite the only eyes ever reading it were mine? Something that I used to turn to as a way to relieve pressure became a burden I no longer wanted to carry out.
When starting this Didion-inspired notebook, I was able to truly listen to the world around me. “Watch out! There are people in front of you.” “Excuse me, do you know where the cheese is?” “You promised that we would go back to the arcade.” Suddenly, my ears were filled with the conversations surrounding me. A young boy running around a supermarket with a concerned father not far behind. An old woman looking for a topping for her egg sandwich at a hotel breakfast. A little girl reminding her mother of the promise to take her to the arcade, to which the mother says “I never said that, what are you talking about?”
I have had many peers come to me asking to read my diary, even those who weren’t my friends. People are so eager to see what is going on in the minds of others, even if they don’t know the person. No matter how much you know about someone, you will never be able to know what exactly they are thinking at a given time. I often find myself wondering what thoughts are formulating in the person across from me.
As I was sitting on the train, that was what I was thinking about. Each person has their own life and their own thoughts. Sometimes, I get a glimpse of what some of their lives might look like. On September 5, 2023, I observed a tired mother pushing a stroller with her young son who was crying in it. The father was on his phone, not bothering to comfort the child. The mother eased his tears by letting him cry into her arms. A fifteen-second observation is not enough time to summarize exactly how a person is living, but this first impression made me feel sorry for the overworked mother. A few stops later, a group of men in construction outfits board the train. Their clothes were dirty and their hands looked worn out. They were all laughing with each other, but their eyes were tired and in need of sleep. As a young girl comes onto the train cart selling chocolates for her school, the construction men buy some from her. I wonder if the father helped comfort the child when they got off the train. I wonder if those construction workers were able to get a restful sleep. I wonder if that girl was able to sell all her chocolate.
Part of the reason why I kept a notebook was so that one day, my future self could read these entries and relive the moment. Looking back on entries made only a few years ago and seeing how I felt, it alarms me when I don’t remember little parts of it. By writing down these feelings and observations, I have comfort knowing that they are not completely gone. I realized that most of my entries in my Didion-inspired notebook share a common theme of humanity. I am quick to note down observations concerning how people help others in some way. If this is a reflection of the inner workings of my mind, then I pay more attention to the positives of my life and generally have an optimistic approach to situations.
It is a difficult point to admit. We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing. (“You’re the least important person in the room and don’t forget it,” Jessica Mitford’s governess would hiss in her ear on the advent of any social occasion; I copied that into my notebook because it is only recently that I have been able to enter a room without hearing some such phrase in my inner ear.) Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people’s favorite dresses, other people’s trout (Didion 3).
This passage in Didion’s essay, “On Keeping a Notebook,” caught my attention because she perfectly formulates what I had long been thinking, a thought I struggled to articulate. Whether we truly believe it or not, we feel as though we must not bring too much attention to ourselves. Everyone is somehow superior to us in every room, no matter the context. It is because we assume we cannot outwardly express ourselves that we quietly scribble our mind onto a notebook. I am inspired by Joan Didion and the strength she holds when writing. She copied a note into her notebook, “‘You’re the least important person in the room and don’t forget it,’” because she was able to walk into a room without hearing this. While it shocks me that such a thing could affect Didion the same way it affects me, it helps me recognize that each person struggles internally despite what they show externally. It further strengthens the fact that society frowns upon those who are too outspoken because, then, they would be seen as self-observed. The last sentence of the passage perfectly summarizes the idea that, instead of sharing what excites us, we are encouraged to support the interests of others as a way to seem inconspicuous. It is because of this we see notebooks as a medium we can turn to without the fear of seeming self-indulgent, away from the eyes of others.
As I have a final look through my notebook, I think I can conclude that the reason behind keeping a notebook is to not only observe what surrounds us, but how those surroundings change us. I have noted that after each observation, I can learn a little bit about myself in the process.
FALL 2025
Bibliography
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Amely Gonell for creating artwork for this piece.
Visit the New Media Artspace at http://www.newmediartspace.info/