“Overpriced” Notebooks, “Hipster GameBoys,” and Your Abrasive Brand Ambassador

Field Notes sends out a monthly newsletter called “Staple Day” to its customers, and as I was going through this morning’s email, I casually read this month’s installment: promoting their new run of notebooks1, a mention on Jeopardy!, some blogger talking about how they use the notebooks, the writer’s commonplace journal, and a discount for people working in education to get their pocket-sized editions of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.2 All pretty standard stuff for a company that… wait, hang on. I’d gotten to the end of the newsletter without even realizing that the notebook-obsessed blogger they’d mentioned was me. It was this post in particular. Any time something I write “escapes containment,” I go back and re-read to gauge how it sounds to someone who’s not already familiar with my usual bullshit.3 So I was surprised by how much that post sounds not just critical, but dismissive! Saying I was “under the thrall” of the company’s marketing. Calling them…