Missing Notebook

I've taken a day off from work today, though I was awake by 0600 this morning. Family is still asleep and here I am sitting down in the couch. I was flipping through Notes app on my MacBook, when I came across a link I had saved in Notes. The title of the post is When life get tough. I can't remember how and where I came across it; but there are some good takeaways from it. Among a few others, this one stood out for me right now when I'm contemplating about my note taking tools.

Take notes. Don't believe you are capable of remembering every thought you will ever have. Write! It! Down! Notebook, apps, doesn't matter. Write it down for fuck's sake.

I've always in the habit of taking notes and have always enjoyed it and found valuable in helping to remember things - important things. When I was a Boy Scout, I've always ensured entires and notes in my Logbook was clearly written, neat and up to date. I briefly mentioned about it in a blogpost I wrote a few months back. Even after I started using iDevices about a decade ago, I continued taking down notes using pen & paper. I still keep 2-3 dozens of notebooks filled with handwritten notes and once in a while I keep going back to them. They are mostly work related notes from meeting notes, quick thoughts & ideas to notes made during business travel assignments overseas. Reading some of those old notes bring me memories I will always cherish, in particular about my career in the fascinating world of aviation. In early to mid 2000(s), though I owned a couple of hand-held devices like Palm, HP iPAQ, imate with stylus support for digital note taking, it never attracted me. I continued with pen & paper and I liked it. Then came 1st Gen iPad Pro with Apple Pencil support and I got my hands on with it no sooner it was available in retail. It did not take long to die down my pen & paper note taking habit; instead I gradually got used to taking notes in iPad with Apple Pencil and it worked well for me, until recently when I purchased iPad Pro 2018 with new Apple Pencil. Daughter had already requested for me to give my 1st Gen iPad Pro to her and I did, when she arrived here for her Spring vacation in early April. With that, my interest of digital note taking slowly faded away, even though I had set up my shiny new iPad Pro, with supposedly improved Pencil. At the same time a close business associate of mine had given me a paper notebook in Memo taking format. Naturally, I kind of switched back to pen & paper. I started to bring the notebook along with me to meetings in the day job. I begun to jot down thoughts and ideas that came to mind. It seemed to work well. However, that did not last long until I realized last week that I do not have my notebook with me. I searched in my EDC bag, my desk in the day job and even a couple of meeting rooms that I had been to last week. Now it has almost been a week, I still haven't found it. Not that I had sensitive contents written down in my notebook; but there were a few important quick notes and ideas that I had written down for future reference. In hindsight, I should've digitized those notes by scanning or capturing images. Should I keep hoping that I'd find the notebook back? Should I continue pen & paper note taking in a new notebook and scan my notes, or should I go back to handwritten note taking on iPad….