Seeking: the impossible

So, I'm weirdly picky about certain things (light switches, microwaves, windshield wipers, and silverware settings, just to name a few). But there are some things that I'm particular about in a more haphazard way. For instance, my room is allowed to be messy as long as I still know where everything is. My books are half packed up in boxes (a girl only has so much shelf space!), and the labels leave somewhat to be desired, but I understand exactly what's in each box, so it seems perfectly acceptable to me.

There's one thing that I'm weird about, though, that has no rhyme or reason. I make no secret of the fact that I tend to keep a journal. Perhaps not as faithfully as I should, but I like to keep them full of enough fodder so that if I don't burn them (this is a distinct possibility), my children will have an interesting view of my life. Now, I know some people keep journals in regular notebooks, but personally? I like to think that if I'm going to all this trouble to write down all the potentially interesting parts of my life, it might as well be in a book I like to look at, and one that is Just So.

This means a few things. 1) It has to be spiral bound. This is more for the sake of ease than looks, but I like the look of a spiral-bound notebook better. 2) It can't be plain. There has to be some distinctive feature that makes me want to look at it. 3) The pages can be neither too narrow, nor too wide. If the pages aren't exactly to my liking, I spend inordinate amounts of time in my journal discussing why I don't like the length of the lines. No joke. 4) It can't look too girly, nor too blah, and it can't have anything that would make me laugh at its absurd cover in 10 or 20 years. 5) There are actually other things, having to do with the type of page, the way the lines look, whether or not the first page is blank or lined, and some others. I'll spare you the details.

All that is good and well, but the fact is, there's no such thing as the perfect journal. I refuse to have the same cover more than once (I think I was hit on the head as a child--there's no way this is normal), and I don't like to have the new journal waiting in the wings while I write in a current journal. It makes me feel like the new journal is judging me for being too slow. So I can't buy a new journal until I'm nearly done (or done, if I write too much near the end and lose track of how many pages I have left) a current journal. So that leaves me shopping (sometimes for days on end) for a journal that fits all of my weird quirks. I never find exactly what I want, but, though great perseverance, I usually find something that fits at least a few of my qualifications!

I like to think that I'm particular in this because I don't like to be picky in other parts of my life. That, obviously, is just wishful thinking, as I am hardly perfect and un-picky on other occasions. So anyhow, this all has been on my mind recently as I accidentally finished my old journal and didn't have a new one! I do now (it took about three days, but I got it), but I had to visit many places to find the perfect fit.

In other news, I realize that if I do indeed burn my journals, it will make all this trouble be for nothing. Maybe I'll burn the pages and leave the covers? That might work. Hm.