The Daily Procrastinator

Back when I was in college, everyone was heralding the end of paper. Offices would become paperless. Newspapers would be published exclusively online. Books would become a thing of the past. It all sounded so bright, shiny and futuristic, like an exhibit in Tomorrowland.

Years have passed, and where are we? I don’t know anyone whose office isn’t overwhelmed by paper. Barring the recent news from the Christian Science Monitor, most newspapers continue to sustain a printed edition. Amazon’s Kindle is a cool gadget, but hasn’t yet turned the book market upside down. And I, perhaps more than ever, remain in love with paper.

Sure, I tried to go paperless. I had all the best intentions. I did all of my writing and editing on-screen. I was an early adopter of the Palm Pilot. I did most of my news gathering and even some recreational reading online. But then I started to realize something interesting. Even though I do very well with thinking through rewrites and edits on the computer screen, I don’t catch nearly as many typos and formatting errors as I do when I work with a red pen and a printout. While I loved my Palm, and later my gorgeous metallic red Handspring Visor Edge, I began to rely more heavily on a Day-Timer as the PDA batteries became increasingly unreliable. I still do most of my news reading online, but for me there’s nothing quite like holding a book in my hands and feeling the texture of the pages against my fingers.

In 2000 and 2001, I worked for a dotcom. Everything we did was online content, and when the company inevitably burned itself out, an entire year’s worth of work was lost. Sure, I had a handful of printouts of web pages, but I realized that, for the most part, I had absolutely nothing to show for all of the long hours and creativity of that year. This, more than anything, made me appreciate the permanence of paper even more.

I have gone to a bookstore and chosen one book over another for the feel of the paper in my hand. I have spent hours gazing longingly at beautiful Moleskine notebooks which I always swear will house my deepest insights, yet end up filled with phone numbers and notes from product launch meetings. I have hard-bound copies of dictionaries and medical references lining my desk, even though the same information available online; in my mind, they are the same, but not equal.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore my old-school black MacBook and couldn’t live without it. I blog. I Twitter. I use Facebook. I conduct endless amounts of research online. I email at all hours of the day and night. But at a fundamental level, I remain deeply committed to paper.

If you were to look at my office now, you’d find little difference between my desk in 1995 and my desk in 2008. You’ll see printouts marked with red ink; a Day-Timer filled with every last bit of important information in my life; notebooks and folders of every size, shape and color (including two that I purchased just this week); and books. Oh so many books. Too many to fit into the bookshelves. I am surrounded by paper, entire forests of knowledge, experience and creativity. And I realize that I couldn’t live any other way.