Best Laid Plans

So in the notebook world there is this primo paper. It’s Tomoe River Paper and it’s a Japanese delicacy. It’s lightweight but sturdy. It’s good for watercolors, fountain pens, it doesn’t bleed, a holy grail. The process… I’m not going to act like I know the process…is so much so that the pandemic, this global pandemic we are still actively living through, has made production very hard and the supplies have dried up. At first we thought it was a temporary thing, they were going to find alternative ways to produce, but news came through over the weekend that the Tomoe River Paper has ceased production and whatever was made as of Dec 2020 is it. That’s all that’s left out there in the world.

Now, some of us paper people have started to panic. At the top of the panny, Muji said they were going to file for bankruptcy and I panic bought a 10-pack of blue-black gel pens because I love them so and I was worried the formula or something was going to change I dunno I said panic buy. I’m looking at my different options for TRP notebooks so I can sit and look at them on a shelf and agonize over ever using it or not. This is not specific to a TRP notebook, it applies to literally every notebook I buy.

Companies have put word out like “hey y’all there’s enough to go around and we’ll try to accommodate you we love you” and this one dude emails a company and goes “I need 250 notebooks to last me the rest of my life. Please send me a quote for shipping.” Deadly serious.

Like, remember when all those people kept hoards of toilet paper? And then a couple weeks ago and those jackasses were filling up Rubbermaid totes with gasoline? I don’t know enough about sneaker releases aside from the fact that some Saturdays Brownlee is in a pissy mood cause bots bought all the shoes. Have we have learned nothing as a society? And don’t be all “who is we” about it because that’s how we got into this situation.

I’m having such a hard time planning for the future because 1. it was never a thing that I did and 2. I had big plans to see The Black Keys and Gary Clark Jr. summer 2020 and those plans quickly went to shit. Yes it was just a concert but it was going to be a good one. I don’t have faith in the state of the world to be planning for how many notebooks I’m going to need to last me for the rest of my life let alone figure out the logistics of storage.

Like, shit changes. Notebooks get discontinued and concerts get canceled and pandemics sweep the globe. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. “I don’t know why. Perhaps she’ll die.” (This isn’t the correct quote but my friend says it this way cause we can’t remember the real quote, which makes this one the only one I know now.) If we haven’t learned how to manage expectations and pivot where necessary, then we’ve suffered and learned nothing.

via GIPHY