No, we didn’t save the world, but it’s been worth trying :)

Back home we learned to say “draft” very early, as my parents always stored paper sheets that were printed or written only on one side to be reused: the back of a bank statement would become a shopping list or even the printing of bills to be paid, and only then discarded. We always heard from them: “grab a draft for me son”.

When he worked at the local power company, my dad always saw loads of sheets with public lighting projects being thrown away, even though they were unused on one side, and found it wasteful. Tiago and Tales can attest that we had a very fun childhood, drawing on huge A1-sized sheets, using them to cover the table or floor before making art, or even trying to understand the actual project on its other side.

One day my father showed up with the huge notepad on the GIF, said he had grabbed a lot of A4 sheets that would be thrown away and decided to rehash them, asking for them to be cut in half and making the notebook. We even laughed at the time, because it was gigantic, we thought it would never finish, but today, over a decade later, it’s over.

The notebook was there for the whole of our university, it was used to take notes while we studied, to log board game plays or even the phone of someone we had to call. It accompanied me throughout the beginning of my professional career, saw me run interviews, kept new feature ideas, registered painful steps when trying to understand a bug and even became a diary for some time!

It may sound silly, but seeing the old notebook running out of blank space ended up becoming a milestone. I was even anxious for it to happen, now I feel weird thinking that I’ll have to buy a new one, all thanks to our parents who taught us how not to waste stuff.

Thanks Vera and Arnaldo. No, we didn’t save the world, but it’s been worth trying :)