There’s a yellow composition book sitting by my chair. It’s that classic marbled cover, you know the one, except back when I was in school there weren’t any of these fun options. Composition books came in black and white, period. Now you can find them in all shades of the rainbow plus the black and white ‘cuz some folks only want the classics. You know how that goes.

Anyway, this bright yellow composition book contains my auction scribblings from the last year and a half. Like most people our live event was postponed in spring of 2020 — nobody was gathering up hordes of people once the lockdowns started. We were so optimistic we rescheduled for September, hoping that there’d be major progress by the fall.

I think it was sometime around June 2020 when I knew that one was a pipe dream. I stored my materials and decided we’d get back to it when we could.

Eventually they decided to hold the entire event online this spring. When the auction chair reached out to me there were a few panicky days there when I couldn’t track down my notebook. My brain sounded a lot like this. THE NOTEBOOK. THE AUCTION NOTEBOOK. WHERE DID I PUT IT?? I STUCK IT SOMEWHERE SAFE, I KNOW I DID, BECAUSE I WAS THINKING I’D HAVE TO PUT MY HANDS ON IT RIGHT AWAY ONCE THEY CHOSE A DATE. I COULD HAVE SWORN IT WAS HERE BUT…NOPE, NOT THERE. NOT THERE EITHER. WHERE COULD IT BE WHERE COULD IT BE WHERE COULD IT BE WHERE COULD IT — ah, there it is. Thank goodness.

These are only some of the reasons I started going gray in my twenties.

The yellow notebook is now divided into Before and During. Before The Pandemic: notes on getting stuff done for a live event and how to build a platform to support it. Then beyond a big bookmarked page is During The Pandemic: notes on transitioning to online. Followed by notes on what went wrong while transitioning to online. Combined with notes on how to tweak the platform and produce receipts and embed videos and auction strategy and YouTube links and on and on and on.

But we’re out the other side and I find myself facing the question I always face at the end of a huge project: There are still blank pages left in that notebook. It’s the Auction Notebook, it’ll always be the Auction Notebook, but there are still blank pages in there. If I just toss it I’ll lose all those blank pages and that’s like stabbing a writer through her paper loving heart. If I flip past my auction notes until I use up all the blank pages there’s a high probability I’ll end up banging my head on a table or two. Why? Oh, no reason.

On second thought, maybe it’s for the best if I just sacrifice the notebook. New chapter and all that jazz.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “to your left.” When you sit down to write your post, look to your left. What is the thing closest to you? Write about the memories that thing induces. Enjoy!