No, not that kind…

I’m a big fan of the Moleskine brand of journals, and while there are plenty of other brands doing something very similar, which I also enjoy, I tend towards brand loyalty. I think Hemingway used them, but I don’t know what kind of shotgun he used so maybe not the best advertiser…

Anyway, I have a bunch of little ones, but only one black one. It kinda fits in a pocket, but it’s roughly the size of my iPhone Plus, so the two of them fit into my hands pretty easily. I do tend to carry it around even though it often stays in the car because it can be awkward to just have with me while I’m shopping, etc.

The contents of this little book is why we’re here – I’m not bragging that I collect notebooks and journals… I mean, I did give away a whole bunch last year to friends of mine with small children, and I STILL have several… So, this is where I’ve been adding sundry quotes, lists, etc., that I find inspirational or thoughtful. The purpose of this exercise is to suggest everyone draw your inspiration from anywhere. Here’s a list of what I presently have written down, bearing in mind I don’t have all of everything listed:

• The Four Agreements
• Legend of the Five Rings 1st Ed RPG
  • Shinriku’s Little Truths – Way of the Scorpion
  • Sayings of Shinsei – Way of the Monk
  • Sayings of the Ise Zumi – Way of the Dragon
• Saga Briggs 25 Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset (link)
• A whole bunch of Stoic thoughts from various Ryan Holiday books
• The Tao Te Ching – translated by Stephen Mitchell
• On Emotional Intelligence (link)
• The Hermetic Principles
• Bertrand Russell’s Decalogue
• Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit
  • Sagan on logical fallacies
• Plato’s Cardinal Virtues
• Celeste Headlee’s A Better Conversation (link)
• Miyamoto Musashi’s Dokkōdō (link)
• Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths & the Noble Eightfold Path
• Various quotes from Dune by Frank Herbert
• Various quotes from True Detective season one’s Rust Cohle (sample)
• The Seven “Sins” of Memory by Daniel Schachter (link)
• Various quotes from Mark Heard’s Diary of a Musician (link)
• The openers from the Star Wars Clone Wars show (link)
• Even some random quotes from watching Doctor Who… not as many as I would have thought, though…

Obviously, there are more things that inspire me, but these are things that I carry with me, and I reference the book often. Over time, I have come to find that certain items no longer inspire me because I have outgrown them or their meaning no longer has meaning to me…

If you’re annoyingly interested in collecting information, or you just like having random quotes around, Moleskine makes a hell of a product line 😉

…and, yes, I have plans on expanding my views on several of these.