Tuesday, February 18, 2025
I was looking Etsy for a vegan slip cover for my Field Notes journals. I wanted something that would protect a volume should I tuck it in a bag or pocket. I found a good one, and it wasn’t that expensive, but then I thought, why don’t I try to make one?
Then I thought back to middle school and high school and how part of our assignments at the start of the school year was to take a paper bag from that week’s grocery run and make book covers.
If you went to school in the 80s and 90s, book covers were essential to keep from damaging a book that would be in public-school circulation for at least a generation, but it was also a way to be creative. You could draw on them, put stickers on them, and so on.
With my Field Notes journals, I wanted something with a sturdy backing in case I didn’t have access to a table. I found a sturdy envelope and cut the cardboard to shape and tucked it into the covers. Now the notebook has more structure.
I’ll be interested to see how durable this is. One “edition” of my journal is six “volumes” of Field Notes. Why six? They send you six every quarter (I’m a subscriber) so I see one edition/collection as six. Then I wrap them in a rubber band and move onto the next edition.
At which point I file them in a Field Notes wooden archival box.1
I write in my journal every day2, and usually about two pages in these notebooks per day. They contain 48 pages, so at maximum, one notebook usually lasts me 24 days, so about three weeks. 18 weeks per edition, so I go through about three editions/collections per year, give or take. I’ve been especially verbose and long-winded of late so I’ve really been burning through notebooks.
All of this is to say, I was super thrilled to make that book cover. And it was super fun. I might make a new cover for each edition, or I might just beat the shit out of one until it’s in tatters then make a new one.
I had to resist the urge to “post” about it on social media. [This is a blog for another day, but it gets to this idea that we compulsively need to run to social media because if we don’t post about something did it ever happen? Then, are we experiencing things for the entirely wrong reasons? Our brains have been so ruthlessly hijacked that we’d rather see likes and follows than sit with the satisfaction of having experienced something.
So, I blogged about the book cover, which was a kind of compromise;3 the blog being a throwback and not giving Big Tech anymore data and attention than it already steals. Will people find this? I doubt it. Will people read it? Not likely. Do I care? A little, because why put all this effort in if nobody is gonna read it and shower me with laurels?4 That said, raging against the algorithm is a lifestyle change. It’s not a hack. It’s not a quick fix. You will feel like you are more invisible than you already are. That’s OK.
Bookmark your favorite sites. Lean into inconvenience. If it feels inconvenient, if it feels slow, then we know that it’s right.
- I’m a Field Notes junkie…and no they are not a sponsor, nor do I use affiliate links. ↩︎
- It’s the highlight of my day. ↩︎
- Oooo, semicolon! ↩︎
- lol ↩︎
