filling notebooks

Occasionally I feel anxious about filling this page or that page, using space in a notebook.

Is this worth putting down? I think.

Then I remember a story that I heard once told by Terry Tempest Williams, that haunted me. As I remember it, right before dying Terry's mother told her that she wanted her to have her journals, but not to look in them until she was gone. There was a great row of them on a bookshelf, volume upon volume. 

So Terry waited, and then after a period of time she took one down to look in it. Now I will know, she thought. Now I will hear her voice. 

The book was empty.

So was the next one, and the next.

They were all empty.

And I resolve to fill the notebooks, fill them all (because I'm going to buy them, there's no question about that). Fill them with whatever fills my fancy.

There will not be a row of empty notebooks when I am gone!