Yesterday I went to four different stores to look for a new sketchbook for the summer. Even though I have about five that are only half filled, I still embark every few months on finding a new one. There’s just something about starting fresh. Clean paper, no coffee stains, chip grease, or weird crumbs inhabiting the pages of my creativity. However, before even stepping foot across the door to hear “HI WELCOME TO…”   I already had all these prerequisites of what I was looking for such as the brand, quality of paper, price, etc. Of course when you have these things it’s harder to find exactly what you’re looking for, but who am I without them? So I looked and searched for the perfect one and none seemed to meet my standards. Where one was good in a particular area it was lacking in the other.

Then I thought to myself, why is this turning into such a thing? It’s a sketchbook. It shouldn’t be this hard. This is the most freeing step of the creative process, throwing down ideas, sketches, colors, and stupid things you’ve overheard someone saying. These all get placed into a book that you throw in your back seat and your friends accidentally step on anyways.

What is the point of faking professionalism when your life is everything but that. Getting a sketchbook such as a moleskine because people like Da Vinci, Picasso, and Hemingway used them isn’t going to fix your messy life. So I ditched what I thought I wanted and ended up getting what I needed. A sketchbook from the five dollar and below rack. The cover reads “no prob-llama” and has a llama with a stupid grin that would probably piss anybody off if they were in that sort of mood.

Why?  Because it made me stop what I was doing and laugh. Because the little girl who wore a tutu and played “dragon rumble” with her brother in the store that consisted of them roaring and flapping their wings bought the same one. Because I realized that life is so serious and art doesn’t have to be.