This is something that probably only matters to me… but since we’re living in a share little things type of world, here goes.

I’ve always carried some sort of sketchbook around with me.  It was a habit I formed in high school and never kicked.  When I seriously started writing comic strips (around ’98 or ’99), I began to carry a lined notebook along with the sketchbook. I felt it necessary to keep the dialog separate from the pictures…writing is a different thought process than drawing and vice versa.   Plus, I needed the lines to keep my writing straight on the page.

In 2007, I began to think about graduate school.  I applied late that year and was accepted in early 2008.  It was around this time I started to keep a journal… just something I could jot down the days events in.  I’d always kept a journal in some form (another habit formed in high school) but I was never very disciplined about writing in it daily.  There are gaps several weeks wide between some earlier entries.

2007-2008 – This was a time where a lot of change was happening for me.  School, divorce, move, love, life.  I felt the need to document all the things I was going through simply to remember what had happened.  It helped.  Once the really dark stuff was weathered, I just kept documenting.  The graduate faculty in my MFA program suggested that students keep a journal of their time in the program…I was already doing it.  Their logic was it would help at the end when you examine your work progress and process in the program.  They were right.  As a matter of fact, I used entire pages of my journal in my final process paper.

So, since then, the two books I carried around became three.  Every day.

I’m telling you all this to tell you this: this morning was the first time in the history of Frank Page notebooks and sketchbooks that I started a new notebook, new journal and new sketchbook at the same time.

That’s all. It may never happen again.  I just wanted to be sure I documented it.