Battle Tools: Notebook and Pencil

Screens, an almost impossible opium to resist

The first time I use a notebook to write out my essay, I feel somewhat ridiculous. My hand is much slower than my brain; I can’t keep up with the phrases and words that want to come racing and tumbling out. Perhaps this is the point, the experiment: can I reign my mind back to a speed that matches the reality of my physical limitations. Can I once again enjoy the flavor of good language, a slow poem, the space that stretches between thoughts?

What helps me: the small collection of Jet Pens pencils. Silly, perhaps, but a joy that as a girl shopping for the scent of fresh school supplies in September, I am revisiting. With my little pack of new pencils, I can play with multiple brands and see which kind feels best in my hand and be a joy to pick up. Hmm…do I like the eraser attached, or no? I’ve decided to rid myself of plastic pencils forever. As much as I enjoy their fine points, they are indeed plastic and more than once I’ve found them chewed to bits by the puppy, who is two and ought to know better by now. Somehow, I am more annoyed by that than destroyed wooden ones, which seem a more natural dog chew.

A decent notebook, too, helps. I enjoy the smooth paper of a Septcouleur, but this collection is also just as good and hopefully will return to the store front. I like my notebooks not too big to be overly daunting, but not so small I feel like I can’t sprawl all over the page or cross a bunch of things out. I love to use arrows and margins, and it is so satisfying to slash through the entire page once it’s been transferred to the computer.

Smaller pads of paper are also helpful. I keep one by my bedside, and one in my purse, to catch those odd phrases, words, outlines, and ideas. Throughout the days, I add to them (“…and furthermore…”), slowly building until I cannot but stop to gather those snippets of thoughts into a coherent reading.

In another notebook on my desk, I keep my habit tracker, food log, Lenten fast notes, and house notes (what needs repair, measurements, ideas for various rooms as they come up). I also keep detailed notes on Ruby, my 16yo with Down syndrome. She has a team of specialists working with her, and one of them is a homeopath looking for clues to help Ruby come out of her mysterious regression. Whereas her main doctor may want blood and urine samples for testing, her homeopath wants moods, shifts in bowel movements, and to know for example how many words she spells on a given day to communicate with. My notebook is a place to play detective, not only for Ruby, but to track problems that trouble me and progress to celebrate. It’s also a welcome place to dump the “To Do” list out of my head, and to help me shut down in the evening so I can relax before bed.

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My 12yo daughter accidentally closes the plethora of tabs on one of the windows I had been working through on the computer. Argh. I can’t remember all of the rabbit trails I had burrowed into on all kinds of topics. I can see, even now as I type this, pausing on my essay, seventeen open windows on my dock, with who knows how many tabs per window. I feel overwhelmed just sitting here at the computer, typing in my handwritten notes, noticing all of the WORK TO DO staring at me in the face.

I decide not to plow through my history to remember what it was I was doing on the closed tabs. If it really matters, I will remember later. It does make me wonder if this one machine that does so much is actually better than a stack of books with bookmarks sticking out of them. Maybe I actually do not need as much information as I think I do. Sure, my kid could just as easily pull out the bookmarks, but flipping through them to find my places seems less daunting that scouring the internet.

I want to be less daunted. Perhaps I ought to trash those seventeen windows without looking at them. Will the roof crash in if I do?

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Speaking of kids, I’m down to teaching the last four (of nine) children now. Two have Down syndrome and though they obviously know how to read and do some math (as seen via their spelling to communicate), they are unable to physically handle work books and such. Instead, I read aloud all kinds of material, such as Caesar’s World and Mystery of the Periodic Table, and play audiobooks, such as Jane Eyre. Videos are also instructive, and we do use them once a day. I would love to transition them both from letter boards to text-to-speech machine(s). Screens with a specific purpose for a limited time serve us well. I think.

I have a 12yo also, the tab closer, who is an excellent musician and has a rich imagination that comes out in her amazing drawings and written stories. But math, oh math, how she hates you, which I cannot understand as music is, of course, math exemplified. It is a medicine she takes, but what a squirrelly rabbit she is with it!

The 7yo is at that point where great leaps are made, which of course is every homeschooling mama’s delight. My challenge at this point is to keep the learning delight-ful, lest he too come to decide one subject or another is a distasteful medicine.

I bring up homeschooling because I also ask my children to keep their own notebooks and sketchbooks. We keep their screen times very limited, and everything is password controlled. I hope because their formative years were built mostly on books, board games, and the great outdoors they will be less inclined to chase after the black holes of addictive (yes, literally addictive!) screens and the deadening of their minds because of them, and choose to continue to read books and use pencils and interact with real people in real time, enjoying God’s creation outside of having to record and share everything they see and do with the world at large.

The pull of the internet and all things screen related is an almost impossible opium to resist for many, if not most, people, no matter what it does to their cognitive functioning and anxiety levels. I remain in the battle for myself, and in prayer for my children’s futures.

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