Something to do

He liked to use those recycled paper, brown card-stock covered notebooks from the no-brand-name shop. The paper was smooth and cream colored and the notebooks had a shiny red, woven ribbon glued into the spine for keeping one's place. The notebooks were a dollar a piece. They seemed worth it to him.

For writing, he used long, round, plain wood pencils with hard leads and no eraser. He never erased. When he wanted to change something, he just struck through it like this and quickly kept moving across the page, scrawling words that he could barely read himself when he went back to read them.

After weeks of writing, scribbling, scrawling, the notebook would be mostly filled and the end of the ribbon a little frayed. The long pencil's lead was dull and it was no longer really such a long pencil. It might only be four inches. And his fingers ached and cramped, his knuckles were a little sore. But it was something to do.