From 2018, I have used a fancy Black N’ Red notebook to record my notes for solving Project Euler and competition programming problems. On a whim, I found out that this humble notebook my parents brought home from their office a very long time ago is actually pretty expensive, about $10 each in a pack and $15 individually. The advertised Optik paper is “bright white” and “reduces ink bleed”; to me, the paper is really not bright white compared to copy paper, and has started yellowing on the edges (probably dirty rather than natural yellowing). It does have some kind of coating that makes the paper smooth and a little glossy, which is slightly worse for pencil but erases really well with a Hi-Polymer eraser. I make too many mistakes to use pen ink in this notebook, but the paper is thicker than my other throwaway cheap 99¢ notebooks from a Staples sale I used.
Anyway, this year I finally used up all 140 pages. I have at home at least two more of these notebooks, including a newer model, but going through the pages I found a few that were almost blank or contained throwaway scribbles. Why not reclaim these pages, so I can have a fully-utilized notebook? From reading about ancient codices, historical manuscripts actually did this a lot, albeit erasing a whole text because parchment was so expensive. My use case is more like clearing an abandoned lot to build something more useful there. Paper is hardly a rare commodity these days, but this notebook has great sentimental value to me, so I would like to fill it up fully. Historians won’t find anything valuable in the erased material, yet I find it funny that I am inadvertently continuing such a dated practice. Taking my notes digitally would be much easier to search and organize, but I’ve always done math work on paper, and I don’t have a stylus tablet for digital notes (though incidentally I do have two drawing tablets from my osu! days).