Feel the fear and put the stickers on the damn notebook

Committing to chaos: embracing my fear of stickers and creativity

Hi! Forgive me, for it’s been a while since I have written something that has actually flowed from me that hasn’t felt like I had to begrudgingly continue with. I guess the best ideas are often right under your nose! For me, this was quite literally; they were on the back of my laptop. Enjoy!

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At the start of August, I packed up my flat and moved out. Of course, moving’s never easy. Packing always leaves me feeling overwhelmed. I don’t even like packing for a night away, so you can imagine my reluctance when it came to everything in my flat that I had accumulated over the two years of living there. The month leading up to my lease ending consisted of many trips to my local charity shop to make donations of unwanted items.

Among those boxes was a stack of notebooks. I can already hear the exclamations, but Abi, how can you get rid of those??? They haven’t even been used! And that’s exactly why I put my foot down and parted with them. I have lost count of the times I have stumbled across a pretty notebook and thought to myself, That’s the one. The one where you will finally throw your inhibitions to the side and put pen to paper. Brand new and there in all its glory, representing new possibilities. A new life, maybe?? What if this is the one where I come up with an amazing idea, and they want to document the very place it started out??? Or finally getting into the habit of journaling before bed, sitting with my thoughts and turning them into words on a page. What will my future grandchildren have to discover when they eventually go up into the attic and search for traces of a life their grandma lived in her youth?

Well, I call bullshit. I have lied to myself for the last time. Donating those unused books was the first step on a journey to no longer being afraid to commit to empty pages. I can’t remember when this first started, but I have memories from even my childhood of being afraid of screwing up the first page of a brand new notebook. Even my exercise books at school! The typical error of writing the wrong date was the main culprit. But that alone was enough to send me into a spiral. Like when you go out in a new pair of trainers (always white ones), and someone steps on your toes. Typical.

Notebooks weren’t my only kryptonite. It was stickers, too. The potential of where to place them would hang over me like a cloud. Eventually, that potential would turn into pressure, and I would store them away for when I found the “perfect use” for them. I couldn't just be sticking them anywhere!

And the third one, for my triple threat, was scrapbooks. For someone who was and still is a creative person, it was this trio that became the bane of my existence. Every time one of these entered my life, I would pine and ponder over their use. The surface-level answer for why I would give up is the fear of messing up. But deep down, this is tied to the fear of those mistakes being permanent. In fact, that fear of permanence continues to linger, creeping into adult decisions, too. What if committing to these creative projects is just a small part of a much bigger picture? It’s not just the fear of messing up a notebook—it’s the fear of committing to any decision. I tricked myself into saving them for a special project. A project that was never conjured into physicality. I only had myself to blame.

Isn’t it embarrassing to still have this be an issue once you’re grown up? If someone else was to ask me that, I would say no because I understand it. But writing out these thoughts puts them in a new light, and I almost feel silly for it. It’s strange to be so cautious about something as small as a sticker or an empty page, but maybe it’s not about the thing itself—it’s the permanence it represents. Life feels easier when you can leave all options open without having to pick just one.

Permanence feels like a strange thing to worry about. Though it makes sense if you’re someone who is also indecisive. Indecision and creativity don’t always go hand in hand, they often feel like repelling magnets. So here I am, stuck in the middle. And what’s worse is that not deciding becomes its own decision—those pages gather dust, the stickers lose their stick, and all those creative possibilities slip away.

But recently, I’ve started to let go of that fear of permanence.

I now put stickers on my laptop. One of the many things I have gone back in time to do over; those innocent moments from childhood. A way to express myself. It’s a small step, sure, but it feels like I’m reclaiming that hesitation. Each sticker I have (confidently picked) feels like a decision that doesn’t have to be perfect. Every time I open and close my laptop, I see a collage of reminders that creativity is messy, and it looks great.

See you soon ❤️