I’m coming into the home stretch with my current notebook, an unlined Moleskine. My choices for the next one are:

• a squared Moleskine
• an unlined softcover Moleskine
• an unlined Moleskine Volant
• a Filofax

Each of these would have its advantages and disadvantages. I rather like the squared paper for list-making and doodling, though it can be a little distracting for some kinds of drawing. And I was very fond of my previous softcover Moleskine, though it was a bit less durable than the hardcover ones. There’s a trade-off between the pleasant tactile quality of the soft cover and its sense of being less permanent. I am not sure I want to keep journal entries in a softcover, so would I go back to using two notebooks simultaneously, a softcover for daily jottings and a hardcover for my journal? The Volant would also present the same problem, of being inappropriate for journal entries, but if I’m going to carry two notebooks, maybe it makes sense for one of them to be thinner and lighter.

As for the Filofax– whoa, am I really considering going back to a Filofax after all these years? In some ways, it would make sense for me to have the flexibility of moving pages around to keep notes on particular subjects together. But although I’ve always kept all my used Filofax pages, these don’t have the nice archival quality of a row of bound notebooks. But I have a very nice Filofax, the Guildford Pocket Extra Slim, brand new in its box. I had to buy it because it was the perfect size I’d always wanted, which they never made back when I was actively using Filofaxes. So I’m kind of itching to give it a try, and I have plenty of unused insert pages to fill it with.

Yes, these are the weighty questions I’ll be pondering over the next week or two as my remaining blank pages are filled…