Commonplace, bullet journal, or both?
Last week I began reading Alec Guinness' "A Commonplace Book", published posthumously. It's as it sounds: his commonplace book that he wrote in and seemingly intended to publish at some point1. I had no idea this existed; 25 years ago I would have bought it as soon as possible as I remember being captivated by the actor when I was a Star Wars fanatic.
I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it that much back then, because I also wasn't greatly interested in poetry or Shakespeare beyond assigned reading in school. At this point in life, I am absolutely enthralled. I've heard of commonplace books before, but only as a concept; I've never read a book or any examples.
What fascinates me the most are his wry observations, and his vivid descriptions of events and places. Even more interesting are his dreams - they all seem to be about the theatre. I'm trying to find juxtapositions between some of the passages he quotes, but I'm not always finding any2. Some of the passages he pulls from the Bible are interesting, but I most enjoy the quotes that are amusingly out of context3:
'Be ashamed ... of leaning your elbow on the table.' Ecclesiasticus 41:19
Also interesting is that this book became available to me from the library at the same time I've been creating my own notebooks. Is it a coincidence or divine intervention telling me I should create my own commonplace book? I'm not sure on that one but I am interested in starting a commonplace book. I have the perfect such notebook sitting beside me at my desk right now: one of my self-made notebooks that has elastic binding, so is super easy to insert more pages as needed (and take some out, if I want to preserve those in another place down the road).
But another conundrum comes to mind: am I already making a commonplace book in the form of my bullet journal? At the moment, most of what I put in there are to-do items, places I need to be, and other general "organization" notes. But occasionally I will enter short, point-form journal entries (that I transpose to my daily note in Obsidian). However, I don't include things like quotes or general observations. In that sense I don't consider my bullet journal to be a commonplace book, but it also isn't a capital B bullet journal.
I think I'm okay to leave my bullet journal the way that it is in terms of function. The point-form journal is fine - it's usually things like how I feel at a certain moment in time:
2:53pm Very tired and very much want to go home. No longer "in the mood" to be here.
To be honest though, other than occasionally when I want to note down things I want to do on the weekend, or things I absolutely must do, I don't have a lot going on in the journal. I think what I'm going to do is combine work and personal stuff once the notebook I'm currently using for work is complete (which is in 6 pages). I've resisted this before, as I don't want to mix professional and personal business, but it makes sense to me because the two are intertwined.
As for the notebook beside me - I'm going to start taking notes and specific observations - things that stand out to me in the world. I can only hope to describe things as vividly and interestingly as Sir Alec Guinness did. I was going to make notes on things I've watched/read, and I will still do that, but I'll add those other things to it.
So I guess, to answer the question of my post title...both!
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He wrote an introduction for it that reads as though he were preparing his book(s) for publication.↩
Or I'm missing them.↩
There's also one where he finds the words "shake" and "spear" in specific parts of the King James bible, and finds a connection to Shakespeare's age when the book was finished. Quite fascinating.↩