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Re:The ‘specialness spiral:’ Why we label ordinary objects a... by pavlov on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:07AM (#34801592)
At least for people with a designer/artist mindset, it's the fear of the blank canvas.

People have an idealized end state in their mind: buying the notebook they imagine what its pages could look like a year from now, filled with insightful notes and breezy sketches. By committing something to paper on the first page, they're breaking that mental image. The notebook of their dreams won't exist and something mediocre is inevitably creeping in its place.

Re:The ‘specialness spiral:’ Why we label ordinary objects a... by throwanem on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @11:36AM (#34806271)
I suppose that makes sense, with the nature of the idealization as the problem. It is a reasonable problem to have, for anyone who hasn't yet realized that 99.9% of the stuff you see from "bullet journal" Instagram was created for "bullet journal" Instagram as purely performative #vanlife on paper, and almost no one who actually keeps notes or diaries for their own sake actually does anything remotely similar.