How Many Notebooks is too Many?

I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.

I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.

I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.

A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.

I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.

Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.

As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:

• Baseball
• Gàidhlig
• Norwegian
• One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
• Religious studies
• Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)

And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.

So how many notebooks is too many?

Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.