Do you ever feel like there is a sad and lonely notebook and you might be its only savior? If so, you’re not alone in your desire to do a notebook rescue!

I recently performed a selfless, heroic act of notebook rescue. I went back to Jerry’s to see if they had any more of the Reflexions Pocket Journal that I recently reviewed. (They didn’t, but they had some other Reflexions brand sketchbooks.) I was trying to be really ruthless about not buying anything else I didn’t need, so all I picked up was one eraser for myself. (I was with a friend who was buying pottery tools.) But then when we were in line at the register, I saw one of the old Pen & Ink sketchbooks. This product , from Art Alternatives, has been changed to a different design that I don’t like as much, and I always wish I’d bought more of the old ones, so I picked it up, hoping it was the heavyweight paper version. It wasn’t. So I almost put it back down. But it was the only one sitting there. It seemed kind of forlorn. The last of its kind. Who knows how long it had been knocking around in that store. It was like it was on the island of unloved toys.

So I decided to buy it! Notebook rescue. I’ll be able to use it at some point, so my altruism is not as pure as it seems.

This all made me think of another occasion where I saw a notebook that I thought I might need to rescue. I was at a local bookshop where I’d previously bought a few of the Bindewerk Linen Flex-Cover Journals I like. I noticed they only had one left, a purple one with dotted pages. I was in another one of these moods where I thought I’d better stop buying notebooks I really didn’t need, and I thought “eh, purple is not really my color,” and managed to resist temptation. I think I even saw it a second time, and still resisted the temptation. Then the pandemic hit, and I didn’t set foot in that bookstore for about a year (though I did call them and order some books to be shipped to me. Gotta support the indies or they’ll disappear).

As things started to open up again after the worst of the shut down, I wondered what had happened to that purple notebook. I kept thinking it had probably been sitting on the same shelf for months, forgotten and ignored. I got quite worried about its welfare, and decided that if it was still there the next time I visited the store, I would ask it to forgive me for having been so cold and make things right by buying it. But when I finally went to the store in person, that little purple notebook– MY little purple notebook– was gone. No notebook rescue needed.

I can’t help wondering what happened to it. I hope someone else bought it and has been lovingly using it, even if they’d never appreciate it as much as I would have. But what if the store hadn’t been able to sell it for a long time? What if they marked its price down? (Which would really have been a shame to miss given how expensive those notebooks are.) What if they finally decided it was never going to move and they donated it? Or worse, put it outside in a sidewalk sale, and it got rained on, and had to be thrown out??? I’LL NEVER KNOW!

I think I may have just identified a new syndrome. Forget FOMO, I’ve got FOMAGNOS: Fear of Missing a Good Notebook On Sale.

Oh dear. Maybe I’m the one who needs rescuing…