I’ve got eleven completed floral notebooks on the floor in front of me. All of them have been finished in Tsushima as I’ve jumped across notebooks during my time here.

I’ll find quotes from movies, shows, songs, conversations, little doodles, the snippets of pieces I’ve yet to construct. I see the scattershot approach I’ve taken to my creative endeavors and it makes me laugh.

It’s a funny thing to sift through the mind of previous versions of yourself. To see the growth. To see the changes— subtle and overt. Funnier still to once again change your relationship with time— as if you can have a relationship with it at all.

I’ve felt lackadaisical lately— but going through these notebooks help. I can see the joy, confusion, sadness, insight, idleness, and the rest of my own mob of emotions as I touch upon the small sparks I’ve left behind. It’s like going Easter egg hunting as a kid. Only now I’m looking for fun ideas and flashes of inspiration.

I think there’s a beautiful camaraderie to reading through old notebooks. You’re stretching your hand through the ink to the past. Sometimes you get a handshake or a high five. Sometimes you get a slap in the face. But you always get something.

So keep looking through these notebooks for a while yet. I look forward to the hands as they come. And maybe if I’m lucky they’ll come bearing the embers of long covered ideas— waiting to be stoked into being.