Let’s say you’re packing for a short trip. Like, just a long weekend. In your own country, in an area with plenty of stores where you could conceivably buy any of the widely-available brands of notebooks. Maybe even in an area with a few cool gift stores that stock cute upscale Japanese notebooks. And let’s say you have plans for the weekend that include lots of activities with family or friends, so it’s not like you’re going to be sitting around writing or drawing all weekend.
And let’s say your current journal has about 10 pages left in it, which should last you at least a week at your normal pace of writing. And you also have with you a sketchbook and a planner.
If you’re me, you get nervous and pack a brand new spare journal, just in case. Of course in this case, and probably in every other similar situation, I didn’t end up needing it, but I couldn’t help myself– I am always paranoid about being caught without a notebook.
What is your tolerance level? Do you always bring extra notebooks on trips? How long a trip does it have to be? How many pages do you need to have left before you feel like you don’t need a spare notebook?
10 pages for a long weekend sounds sufficient.
I usually write about 1-2 pages per day on trips, so depending on how long I’m traveling I would use that to approximate. I have never started a brand new journal while traveling, as it a book I would have wanted to “live in” before it has the privilege of coming along :-)
I don’t worry about it since I always end up buying a notebook from somewhere as a personal keepsake to remember the trip by!
If I have roughly the number of pages that I think I’ll use in the timeframe, I won’t bring a spare. Once when I ran out toward the end of a 15-day trip, with 2 days yet to go, I started using the backs of receipts and other ephemera from the trip to continue writing. I paper-clipped them to the back cover. When I got back home, I taped them inside the back cover with tape hinges. I love going back and flipping through these last “pages,” because the ephemera tell more of the trip’s “story.”
I never carry a spare. I just start a new notebook when the number of ages remaining conflicts with my worst case traveling scenario.
I definitely panic and pack an extra notebook. You never know, I might end up writing that novel I’ve been meaning to.