I have a few boxes in my garage filled with spiral bound notebooks that I’ve collected over the years. Some of them were bought for various classes, others I kept as a means to keep a grip on my own sanity. As I was looking through a few of them I saw this on the first page of many of them: “I love college ruled paper.” On the few that weren’t college ruled, most of them said “I can’t believe I accidently bought a wide ruled notebook!”

There’s something about college ruled notebooks I just love. It started early on in life, back in probably 4th or 5th grade when teachers start making you copy math problems and write social studies outlines. Ever since I got my first college ruled notebook there was just no going back for me. Maybe it’s how you can write more on one page, or maybe it’s the way my handwriting looks so much better between small lines.

Maybe it’s like most other things we love: we don’t know why, we just do.

I’ve written almost everything I’ve ever thought down in a notebook. There are shopping lists, doodles, really horrible poetry, an account of how much I’ve disliked every job I ever had, many WTF and despair moments, designs for my dream house, algebra problems, macroeconomics notes… I came across book and movie ideas, lists of what I want to get people for Christmas, pleas to God, letters I wrote and never sent, people I met and liked or didn’t like, plans to play Legos with my son when I got out of work…

I don’t really know what to do with these notebooks. These days I write everything on my computer. Maybe some of them I will go through and read and save whatever I like and tear out the rest. Maybe I’ll develop one of those movie ideas or share some of that terrible poetry. I could probably compile a book out of these notebooks called “Confessions from a Home Depot Parking Lot” with the ones written during my lunch breaks at a job I was miserable at. Summer’s coming, I’m sure we’ll be having quite a few good bonfires.

I realized today after reading these just how much happier I am now. And how much writing has always helped me sort through any feeling I ever had.

And that I still love college ruled paper.