❧ Filled Notes: 2025 ❧
My 2025 has proven interesting and my use of Field Notes has accelerated.
Why do these images look strange and low-res? That's on purpose. They've been dithered so that they load more quickly and have a smaller carbon footprint. Plus it looks cool. Thank you to Dither Me This for the dithering!
Underland (Center Panel)
Start to End: December 26th, 2024-January 26th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: I really like to end and begin the new year with portal-themed books, apparently. (See the first and last notebooks of 2024 for example.) This was one that I had in my "treasure box," so glad I got to use it.
Kraft, Left-Handed, Modded with Draplin stamps, signed by Aaron Draplin
Start to End: January 26th–March 3rd, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: This one is of course special to me. It's my first left-handed Field Notes, which is an experience I can take or leave. I'm so used to using stuff made for right-handed people that stuff made for left-handed people feels weird to me much of the time. I ordered the Thick Lines set of Cinderella stamps off Aaron Draplin's site when I purchase Turquoise Tribute in December 2024. These two earthier ones seemed like good candidates for a kraft book. When Aaron visited Ann Arbor in February, I got to spend much of the day with him and it was a total delight. The last two things he signed for me that night were two of my notebooks. He didn't say anything, no doubt because he was totally exhausted, but I like to think that I noticed him pause for a second before signing it, taking in my tasteful stamp placement. :P
Deadest Print, "Pretty Much Everything" cut, heavy foil
Start to End: March 3rd–March 29th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: Pretty straightforward journal usage.
Vignette, Green, featuring Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Start to End: March 30th-April 19th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: I chose this Vignette because it was like the bright green of very early spring that emerged on the trees right as I finished this book up. I didn't have an idea of what I wanted to feature on the cover and so looked through my stack of old postcards. This portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a postcard that I think I picked up at the National Portrait Gallery in London almost a decade ago. It really was just the image that looked the best inside the hole, but I was pleased to be carrying STC around for a few weeks. The image on the back is a picture of the 10 of Swords I took with my phone and printed out with my Polaroid Hi-Print photo printer. The card looks dire, but to me the 10 of Swords always means: "Stop overthinking things." A reflection of some emotional struggles and breakthroughs I had while filling up this book.
Birch Bark, Lisa Congdon mod
Start to End: April 19th-May 16th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: I got this Birch Bark notebook in a trade. When I was first starting out with Field Notes, I didn't really see the value of plain notebooks like this, but now I see the potential in being able to draw and paint on the covers or modify them in other ways. After putting some of these Cinderella stamps by Lisa Congdon on it, I posted a picture of this notebook to the Field Nuts group and the crowd went wild. I did end up putting a little glue under the stamps, as the gum on the back was not enough to keep them well stuck, but they held up through the notebook's use.
Aspen, Emily Chaplin
Start to End: May 17th-June 14th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: My favorite of the three Aspen books.
Bon Iver, fABLE
Start to End: June 14th-24th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: These sold out pretty quickly, I'm assuming partly driven by Bon Iver fans but also by the nice graphic design. (The latter was my draw.) As always, I had to go ahead and use it so my chances of having a collector's item are (intentionally) ruined. So far this is the notebook I have filled the fastest. It's the one in which I started using stickers regularly. I also took a family vacation and had some pictures to print and include in it as well.
Birds & Trees of North America: Baltimore Oriole
Start to End: June 25th-July 6th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: I loved these so much I bought all nine, although I imagine I'll trade a few away. I don't get Baltimore Orioles around my yard much, but I did see a couple this year, so it seemed like a good enough excuse. Continued with my use of stickers so I filled this one very quickly as well.
XOXO 2024
Start to End: January 19th-July 9th, 2025
Use: Therapy book
Notes: This was my first notebook dedicated solely to taking notes during therapy sessions and keeping notes about what I want to talk about between sessions. I ended it with 4 blank pages (something I don't usually do) because I had a new issue that I was about to start on in therapy and wanted a fresh notebook for it.
Harvest A: Rainbow Chard
Start to End: July 6th-July 20th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: The Harvest edition came along a couple of years before I got into Field Notes, so I was happy to acquire a couple of these in a trade. They're really lovely. The ledger was interesting to work with and for the most part I just ignored the ledger line and treated it like a lined notebook. Paper quality for both the cover and innards is wonderful.
National Parks: Sequoia
Start to End: July 20th-July 30th, 2025
Use: Journal
M x L x B x D #2
Start to End: July 31st-August 8th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: This is my favorite M x L x B x D I have possessed. I am still not a fan of the blinding orange inner covers, though.
USPS Title IX
Start to End: August 8th-August 17th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes:At some point last year I thought I might start collecting stamps. Not like becoming a stamp collector, though. I just found some old canceled stamps that I really fell in love with. And so I filled the first few pages of this notebook with some stamps without any plan for them and then the notebook sat around for a while unused. So I decided to just finish it off as a journal, but it's nice to look at the stamps, too.
Wilco: John Stiratt
Start to End: August 18th-29th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: I accidentally received two of these when I bought my Wilco set. I've given on away but finally used this copy. Wilco is a very strong set and this book has a nice summer feel.
National Parks: Joshua Tree
Start to End: August 29th-September 14th, 2025
Use: Journal
Turquoise Tribute #1740
Start to End: September 15th-19th, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: It is not the case that I filled this notebook in 4 days. I got about a quarter of the way into it and realized that it was not a good fit for me because of the page color. I flipped out a little bit when Aaron Draplin released these and I do love the aesthetics of the notebooks, but saturated blues tend to give me a headache when I stare at them for a long time, espeically in low light. So I gave this one up early. When I met Draplin in February, he did tell me the secret of where the images on the covers of the Turquoise Tribute books came from. I will keep his secret, mostly because it's a little underwhelming. But if you email me to ask I will share.
Index: Date Book
Start to End: December 16th, 2024-September 26th, 2025
Use: The 2025 Book
Notes: Even though it didn't work out in 2024, I thought I would take another shot at a year-long mini-writing project inside a Field Notes in 2025. It lasted admirably long; I kept it up for 30 consecutive weeks, took 7 weeks off, and then came back for another 4 weeks before hanging up the towel for the year. The idea was to write a sentence or two each day about something that happened or that I noticed or thought of. I am not the kind of person who can keep up these projects forever, however, and I honestly think 34 total weeks was pretty good. I will not be repeating another experiment in 2026, though. The book itself is special, of course. It's the other one that Aaron Draplin signed for me. The cover says, "Emily! You are golden! Stay cool! -- Aaron Draplin." He is a generous man in many dimensions.
Left-Handed Kraft: Snail Mail Tribute
Start to End: September 20th-October 1st, 2025
Use: Journal
Wilco: Nels Cline
Start to End: October 2nd-October 17th, 2025
Use: Journal
Fall Flowers: Purple Coneflower
Start to End: October 17-November 16, 2025
Use: Journal
Notes: Lined books always take me a little longer to fill than graph books, but even so I think this book signaled a slowing down in writing. After filling so many books in around 10 days, I was OK with taking about a month to fill this one up. Fall Flowers is one of my favorite limited editions released in the past couple of years, so I started this one not long after getting it in the mail.