I’ve heard from a couple of readers on how they’re notebooking their way through the COVID-19 shutdown. Here are their stories:

Tina Koyama

A little more than 3 weeks ago, I was so freaked out about the pandemic that I needed something to do to calm my mind so that I could move on with my day. I started drawing my hand (I’ve been washing them so much that I was noticing them more than I ever had before). I committed to drawing my hand every day until this disaster is over. Now it’s become kind of a morning meditation, a much-needed ritual in a time when all my usual routines are gone. Here are a couple of blog posts I wrote about it:

Daily Hands

Morning Meditations

I’m posting my daily hand drawings on Instagram: @miatagrrl

Here are a few of Tina’s hand drawings, they’re great!

Elaine

I keep a journal that tends to have a mixture of writing about my day, quotes that catch my fancy, design ideas, doodles, sketches and so on. I only keep the one journal, plus an assortment of sketchbooks. My current journal is the Endless Recorder in the Pen Chalet exclusive edition. It’s fairly unstructured except that I always date the page. Since falling down the rabbit hole of fountain pens and ink, I’ve also introduced additional excuses to write, such as copying out news headlines. Sometime they are the serious ones and sometime I deliberately search for odd and amusing ones. I also try to include more art than words, as I realised that’s what I most enjoy looking at again later. However the current situation has me writing more than usual. I don’t actually feel particularly anxious, it’s more about feeling challenged about continuing to live life as normally as possible. (It’s really no hardship to me to work from home and occasionally buy groceries… I’m not an extrovert! I’m just not getting as much exercise as I should.)

Here are a few of Elaine’s journal pages:

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Nifty

As for me, I am trying to draw every day and keep journaling, but sometimes there isn’t anything interesting to write about! “Another rainy day at home…” Things can kind of blur together when you’re just doing the same things all the time. But at least it is spring and I have gardening to think about! I used an Appointed notebook to lay out plans for some perennials, as well as laying some flagstones on a gravel patio area. Yes, I had enough time on my hands to cut out individual to-scale flagstones and plants to play with!

I’ve also been trying to use my Nolty Daily Book as a sort of sketch diary. I sometimes write more about the day, but generally try to do a very simple drawing each day and record some basic info. I’m still figuring out what I want to put in my week-per-spread Nolty Efficiency Notebook vs. the Daily Book.

Many thanks to Elaine and Tina for sharing their pandemic notebooking stories! By now, some parts of the USA are trying to reopen a bit but many of us still have a period of staying at home ahead of us. Stay safe, everyone!