The school supply aisle isn't just for kids

I have a confession, and this will surprise absolutely no one: I cannot walk past a school supply display. Not in August, not in January when the notebooks go on clearance, not ever. Something in me sees a wall of pens and just has to go look. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I just know I have to check.

Here's the thing about that aisle every August. It gets dressed up for kids. Backpacks, lunch boxes, the five-subject notebook your teacher required in a very specific color. But if you actually stand in it as an adult, notice what happens. You start picking things up too. You open a notebook you have no plan for. You test three pens on the little pad they leave out, even though you own forty pens at home already.

That's not nostalgia. That's recognition. Somewhere in there is the truth that none of us actually graduated out of needing this stuff. We just stopped calling it school.

We're all still enrolled

Here's what I keep coming back to this week. Back to school isn't really a kid thing. It's a life thing that happens to have a very specific aisle at Target. We are all, every one of us, still being taught something, whether we signed up for the class or not. A hard year teaches you something. A new job teaches you something. Learning to sit with an answer you don't like teaches you something. Nobody hands out a syllabus for any of it, but the learning happens anyway.

So when the notebooks show up in August, I don't think it's really about kids heading back to a classroom. I think it's the one time a year the whole culture agrees, out loud, that starting something new is allowed. That you're permitted to open a fresh page and take it seriously.

What a new notebook is actually for

I want to be clear about something. The appeal of a good notebook was never about slowing anything down. It's about paying attention on purpose, to something specific, instead of letting the whole day happen to you unnoticed. A blank page is small and it is honest. It doesn't ask you to fix your whole life. It asks you to write one true thing.

That's the whole idea behind Open Day Collective, if I'm being honest with you. Every day. On purpose. Not slower. Not smaller. Just chosen. A good pen and a notebook that feels like yours are just the tools that make choosing easier.

If you've been eyeing something in the shop, this is your sign. Not because you need more stationery (you don't, none of us do, we all have the drawer). But because there's something in you that wants a place to put your attention this season, and a notebook that actually feels good to open makes that so much more likely to happen.

One thing I'd ask of you

If this is the kind of thing you want more of, the notebook aisle feeling but in your inbox once a week, that's exactly what The Open Day is for. It's not a marketing email. It's the closest thing I write to a letter. Some weeks it's what I'm learning. Some weeks it's just an honest update from the shop. I'd love to have you there.

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every day. on purpose. 🖊️

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