on starting a new sketchbook

Ever since I can remember, I've loved the limitless possibilities an empty sketchbook, notebook, or ream of paper held and promised to me. A promise of hours of self-entertainment, worlds and realities of my own creation, and blissful escape from the sometimes mundane workings of life. I still remember the first time one my mom handed to me - a kind of cheap spiral-bound thing with maybe 50 sheets inside and a big mechanical toy Godzilla destroying a city; its pages were definitely not acid-free but its selling point was its huge size - 12x17 or something around those dimensions. And I scribbled in it to my heart's content, or rather, when there were no more blank pages to fill. When that book was finished my mom tucked it away with my dozens of other loose-leaf drawings and upgraded me to another large sketchbook - this time with better paper. My sister and I would fly through these sketchbooks afternoons at a time, after school, on the weekends and of course all throughout the summer. After a while, my mom no longer actively supplied us with sketchbooks, so we went off and to find and fill ones fit to our liking. I opt for thick, creamy pages, the higher quality the better (I hate to sully them with useless chicken-scratch sketches, but HEY, I do), whereas my sister wants her pages WHITE and dispensable enough for her to tear through them, filling them up with ideas and references that usually nobody but she understands.

It would be pretentious of me to say the sketchbook influences the artist - because that's total rubbish/utter bullshit, but with the amazing marketing skills of Moleskine notebooks, it's the 'it' sketchbook/notepad/journal to have. A tangent! I am guilty of being a Moleskine carrier, but I found my first one in the summer before 9th grade and have been nothing but loyal ever since. Alas, regardless of the manufacturer of said sketchbook, if all one has on hand is a cheap blue-lined notepad, a legal pad, a napkin, a scrap of paper (and a pencil) - really it's all you need. That and a spark of an idea, a design - anything, and surely, IT will be on its way.