The Bone Folder
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Field Notes

In late 2023, I really got into Field Notes notebooks. Some time in 2022, or even 2021, I got the desire to start a habit of carrying a pocket notebook around with me. I wanted to use this as a way to capture ideas for poems and essays, as well as help put some distance between me and my smart phone. However, it really wasn’t until the spring of 2023 that I took steps to make this a habit and finally in the fall of 2023 I got hooked. A big part of that was getting in to Field Notes. While this brand had been on my radar for a long time, I didn’t realize that they made anything other than plain kraft paper notebooks until somewhat recently. Once I saw the variety of covers and paper styles, I knew I wanted to carry these little things around with me all the time.

My partner remarked that it is very strange to see me get into a hobby based on a commodity. That’s true. Usually I get in to activities like knitting or bookbinding without a fixation on a particular product or brand. I think a lot of what I like about Field Notes is the community of people around it, many of whom call themselves Field Nuts. I joined the Field Nuts Facebook community and was impressed with the generosity and kindness I saw there. It's true, there’s a lot of wheeling and dealing and wow some of these notebooks go for a ton of money. That someone would pay $300 for a 3-pack of pocket memo books astounds me. But there are also a lot of people who are there to show off how they use their books and encourage others to do so. Trading with a Field Nut, or buying something from one, generally never involves just getting the thing you wanted. You’ll usually get extra notebooks, stickers, pencils, postcards, and other items. I have actually purchased a large stash of assorted stickers just to be able to give them away.

To keep this hobby from going off the rails, I have a couple of rules in place for myself. The first is that I don’t ever want to pay more than the going retail price for a notebook. That is, as long as limited-edition notebooks are going for $5 a piece on the Field Notes website, I don’t want to pay more than $5 per book for second hand sales. This really limits the number of sales that I participate in. I don’t think that people are charging unfairly for these books necessarily (although the price inflation on eBay is unreal), but I personally can’t justify spending more than $5 on a little 48 page memo book.

The second rule is that I unwrap every pack I get with the intention of using, trading, or gifting the books. I don’t keep packs sitting around in the hopes that they will be valuable one day (even though many of them will.) My intent is to use them or send to their next home. I know that by temperament I am not a collector so I prevent myself from the impulse to stash and hoard them. Collecting the notebooks will be far less satisfying for me in the long run than using them. After all, the whole purpose of taking up this hobby/habit is to write more, not spend more time on the internet looking for things to buy.

For a real-time view of the shifting sands of my collection, see this Airtable view. All records in this table refer to single notebooks, not 3-packs.