This is just a small part of an article in which Paul Zahl talks about the movie Super 8:

Recently I came across ten little notebooks, notebooks for a person’s breast pocket, which I used for my to-do lists during the Winter and Spring of 1972-1973. I was a recent college graduate and quite confused, about absolutely everything. A lot was going on, and just barely underneath the surface. It mainly concerned girls, and sex; not to mention who did I wish to be and become. I was striking out on almost every front, though there were a few shafts of light oddly breaking through. But those notebooks, goddammit!

I read them again. They are lists and lists of “urgent” things to do: letters of recommendation to get, applications to complete, courses to take, contacts to make, professions to pursue, taxes to file. Someone named “Mrs. Watson”, the identity of whom I now have no idea but who was probably the administrative assistant to some academic dean, gets innumerable mentions. Yet the only thing I was really thinking about, I mean really, was the person who would later become my wife ; and how she fit in with some possible other person, and so on.

I love those photos of the notebook in its scribble-covered state. I had some of these Roaring Spring notebooks too:

More about mine in this post. I also liked what he said about what he’d written, as I feel the same way about some of my notebooks– so many random jottings and lists of things to do, but musings about life’s bigger questions too, especially relationships!