To say I’ve been bitten by the traveler’s notebook bug doesn’t accurately describe the relationship I’ve developed with these notebooks in the last few months.  I hate to describe my love for my notebooks as a relationship, but it is.  With each piece I add, remove, change, each notebook becomes a little piece of me that can be held.

I didn’t know a lot about the Midori.  I saw it on Amazon over a year ago and I continued to debate the purchase.  I love writing and I love journals, but something about the Midori kept tugging at my heart.  So this winter, I finally took the plunge and got my first traveler’s notebook, a Midori passport and I was immediately in love.

So now I had this awesome new notebook, so I wanted to learn what more I could do with it.  So I watched YouTube videos, TONS of YouTube videos.  I learned and I joined Facebook groups.  I acquired four more traveler’s notebooks and I learned some more.  One day while watching videos I saw a video that really struck my heart.  I LOVE documenting life, both with pictures and words.  I scrapbook and I love Project Life, but I am terrible about completing albums now that my son is active in school and sports.  I have a way of recording notes for when I go back to document events, but I didn’t have a way of documenting my everyday life.  I want my son to remember what his childhood was like and who his parents were.

So back to the YouTube video that changed my life.  Retrow Tures did a video about using a Field Notes traveler’s notebook to not only document her travels, but she talked about her tagline for her photography business, “Document life as it happens”.  This was new to me, as a scrapbooker I’ve heard this expressed many ways.  For some reason, when she said it, my world stopped and I knew what I needed to do.  I need to use my traveler’s notebook to document each day, the little moments that get missed in the bigger albums.

A dear friend of mine made a gorgeous traveler’s notebook for me and in this notebook I keep an insert of blank pages.  We go to a baseball game, I immediately tape in the memorabilia and write a note.  I don’t care about the layout, colors, matching, I just care about getting that moment recorded.  Later I may print a picture and put it with my memorabilia, but I don’t stress about that.  No more putting ticket stubs and wristbands in a box to scrap later, I use them right now.  If it isn’t flat and won’t fit, I take a picture and put the picture in my journal.  This has changed my life, I now record my life as it happens.  I experience joy as I look back to see what was accomplished and the memories we have acquired.

So I thank Retrow Tures for speaking in a way that allowed me to change my behavior.  If you love documenting your life or want to document her life, I strongly encourage you to search her out on YouTube.  Her videos are short, but very well done.

Documenting the day and the memories when it happens.

Link to Retrow Tures video on YouTube