book number sixteen

content/post/2023/06/book-number-sixteen.md

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+---
+title: Book Number Sixteen
+date: 2023-06-12T19:58:00+02:00
+categories:
+    - learning
+tags:
+    - journaling
+---
+
+This June marks the start of my 16th [journal](/tags/journaling). Last time I wrote about finishing a journal was [book Number Fourteen](/post/2021/07/book-number-fourteen) in July 2021 (which contains a photo of all Hama covers, in case you're curious). Goodbye, Number Fifteen, and thank you so much for your services, but it's time to step down and make room for your successor!
+
+![](../booknr15.jpg "Goodbye, number fifteen, time to join the senior ranks!")
+
+My Hama magnets-converted-to-cover-art is running low; there's only two or three ones left. Number Sixteen is yet again a trusty _Leuchtturm 1917_, even though I [complained about the paper quality](/post/2022/03/leuchtturm-notebook-paper-quality/) when I started Number Fifteen---that seemed to be resolved after a page or 30? I do not notice any peculiarities this time, we'll see. 
+
+The last few months have been very hectic and I have been feeling bad about not taking enough time to sit down and capture ideas, let alone write what's on my mind. I feared my last journal didn't get the attention it deserved, perhaps even taking years to fill, before being promoted to the archive shelf. So I came up with a simple way to quantify "activity": the amount of pages related to the amount of months it took to fill it. Earlier _Moleskine_ (and ripoff) books weren't as beefy as the recent _1917_ hence simply saying "this one took a year, this one six months" won't reveal that much. 
+
+Of course there's more than one hole in my method: some months are less hectic than others, and some months are more note-taking friendly (when on vacation, when reading a book that inspires my work, when on conferences, when working on a paper or idea, ...). Also, throughout the thirteen year journaling journey, I've been wanting to get into sketching on and off, sometimes using another sketchbook with thicker paper for watercolors, sometimes not. In short: pages sometimes fill quicker! The format of the books are more or less a constant---except for two cases, #10 and #14.
+
+![](../bookplot.png "x-axis: book number, y-axis: pages/months ratio.")
+
+What can I possibly learn from the above graph?
+
+- That my last entry, #15, isn't worse than #13? I feared it to be much less productive. It's one of the slowest ones to fill for sure, but not a _lot_ worse.
+- That besides #7, my journaling productivity rate is pretty consistent, falling somewhere between the `20%` and `30%` ratio?
+- That chasing a PhD doesn't mean I somehow jot down a gigantic amount of cross-pollinated ideas and thoughts, as seen in movies starring mad scientists? I started it halfway through #11, which also indicates a decline, followed by two less stellar years---both visible in the above graph and in my mind.
+- That having a smaller notebook jinxes the graph as seen in spikes #10 and #14? After readjusting by taking page size into account, they're actually dropping below `20%`.
+- That 2015 was somehow quite an eventful year (#7). Leafing through the journal, I spot a lot more recipes, more line spacing, and more quotes written down that easily fill a quarter page.
+
+Admittedly, it's still a bit of a silly attempt to get an overview. I noticed that by switching to fountain pens halfway through #9, my writing changes as well, both in compactness and angle. That's something that deserves being worked on a bit more: I have the feeling that my handwriting is worsening.
+
+If I had (way) too much time, I could further inspect gaps in time in-between pages for each journal, but a faint voice in my head tells me that such a laborious work is unlikely to yield that much more insightful results.
+
+Cut yourself some slack, Wouter, book Number Sixteen will turn out to be just fine.