February shitposting, day 16
Feb. 16th, 2019 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI skipped a week, but whatever!
Today's randomly chosen theme is: the first white paper of chance
I believe a "white paper" is some kind of technical government term, but I am just going to talk about paper in general.
So, coincidentally, I was talking to Nick about paper colors on Wednesday near the end of our long conversation, and it turns out we have radically different feelings about white paper. I find white paper intimidating (unless it's computer paper I'm folding and cutting into snowflakes, because in that case the whole point is to mangle it). But for writing, white paper tends to jam me up in a sort of... panic is the wrong word. But I feel that white paper means anything I put on it must be CORRECT, and so I get... performance anxiety, maybe?
I get around this in various ways. One is to use scrap paper, because then it's already ruined so who cares if I mess up more. The other is to use colored paper. This is why all my little notepads are yellow, because it's a friendly color and if I cross stuff out, or misspell things, or add things in weird places after the fact, it doesn't matter.
Nick, conversely, finds that using white paper means he doesn't worry about making mistakes because the white paper sort of purifies them so they don't matter, because the paper itself is so lovely. For him, colored paper jams him up because it will only compound his inevitable goof-ups instead of salving them.
So we both have this notion that white paper is somehow good or pure, but I feel that my mistakes ruin it and therefore feel guilty, whereas he feels that the paper uplifts his mistakes and therefore feels comforted.
...
The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous, but cultural expectations are powerful things and we all interact with them in idiosyncratic ways. *wry*
Today's randomly chosen theme is: the first white paper of chance
I believe a "white paper" is some kind of technical government term, but I am just going to talk about paper in general.
So, coincidentally, I was talking to Nick about paper colors on Wednesday near the end of our long conversation, and it turns out we have radically different feelings about white paper. I find white paper intimidating (unless it's computer paper I'm folding and cutting into snowflakes, because in that case the whole point is to mangle it). But for writing, white paper tends to jam me up in a sort of... panic is the wrong word. But I feel that white paper means anything I put on it must be CORRECT, and so I get... performance anxiety, maybe?
I get around this in various ways. One is to use scrap paper, because then it's already ruined so who cares if I mess up more. The other is to use colored paper. This is why all my little notepads are yellow, because it's a friendly color and if I cross stuff out, or misspell things, or add things in weird places after the fact, it doesn't matter.
Nick, conversely, finds that using white paper means he doesn't worry about making mistakes because the white paper sort of purifies them so they don't matter, because the paper itself is so lovely. For him, colored paper jams him up because it will only compound his inevitable goof-ups instead of salving them.
So we both have this notion that white paper is somehow good or pure, but I feel that my mistakes ruin it and therefore feel guilty, whereas he feels that the paper uplifts his mistakes and therefore feels comforted.
...
The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous, but cultural expectations are powerful things and we all interact with them in idiosyncratic ways. *wry*
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-16 06:40 pm (UTC)For to-do lists and other things I've started using a couple other notebooks that had one or two pages used and then abandoned years ago, and it's the same thing. But five or ten years ago I couldn't have done this, I'd have wanted them to be purely dedicated to one project/life area.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-16 06:48 pm (UTC)I also tend to use notepads rather than notebooks, because then I can tear off and recycle each to-do list page as it's done -- or tear off, staple, and file the pages I've filled with drafts and outlines and such. This means I don't have to worry about topic separation nearly as much. I do keep my to-do lists on a single dedicated notepad, if only because I make my to-do lists several days ahead of myself and prefer not to get other stuff jumbled in with them, but I generally have two or three other notepads in use at any given time and they get repurposed for all kinds of random stuff.