Sure, everyone has long moved on from planner season and even the “my year in review” posts are done and dusted, though I guess you cannot say this blog has ever really been at the cutting edge of anything. So here I am talking of my initial foray into planners. Better late than never, I guess. Surely having been into stationery all your life and written this blog for over ten years now, this can’t be an initiation into the world of planners. Can it? Well, ostensibly friends, the answer is yes.

Yes, there were the yearly, very cheap appointment diaries of many years ago, and the Filofax years (loved my brown leather Timberland cover) in between, however since becoming really invested in all things pen and stationery over the past decade, I had largely been a notebook only kind of person. At least until now. Honestly, this makes me both excited and a little nervous all at the same time.

Why now?

Well, it’s not been a great year to be honest, and during the tougher times the tendency for me is to turn inwards and embrace what brings a little joy. Something to turn your mind to when it needs an outlet. I don’t think anyone will be surprised when I say the very topic themes on this blog (pens, coffee, stationery and the like) are generally the things that help me do that.

Viewing a few planner videos on YouTube (and wow, dangerous as that is…), I began to see a slightly different angle on things. Maybe trying to develop my creative side a little? What began attempting a few basic drawings and sketches, morphed into accumulating a few stickers and templates. I also shifted gears a little from my fountain pens back towards a case full of gel pens. Needless to say, both my favourite Brisbane pen store, Pen and Ink, and online Japanese stationery site Bunbougu facilitated this transition nicely.

How it’s going

I’d have to say I’m fairly pleased so far. Sure, I’ve ultimately realised I’m not great with the drawing, nor am I overly creative, but let’s just call it a work-in-progress. An evolution if you will. Some days I give it a run, others are just words-only as they always were, and that’s more than okay.

The usual crew

Planner season or not, it’s always notebook season… in some form or another. So, at the current time, things are looking like this:

1. Daily Journal: Black Leuchtturm1917 A5 Hardcover in dot grid (a left over from a second failed Bullet Journal experiment earlier in the year)
2. Everyday Notebook: new addition outlined below
3. Novel Writing Notebook: Montblanc #149 lined notebook (sounds grand, though when your last story was 2014’s NaNoWriMo and this is a follow-up — it has been a long time…)
4. Pure Capture: a mix of 2. above and a Field Notes Pitch Black
5. Travel Diary: again, that’s integrated with 2. above as well…
6. 2024 Diary/Planner: the second new addition, further details below
   

New additions

Traveler’s Notebook – Olive Regular Size

I guess this is where things get a little more interesting — at least in terms of the purpose of this post. In the context of some of that list (numbers 2,4 and 5) above, it perhaps comes as no surprise I have delved into the world of the Traveler’s Notebook system. Having purchased an Olive Regular size Traveler’s Notebook cover in August before a 10-day trip away, it has now also become my everyday notebook of sorts as well. I’m still tinkering with various inserts and thinking about how I might “section off” various aspects of my writing life (travel, commonplace, general note-taking, writing etc) so I’ll say the TN lifestyle is also still a work in progress.

Things seem to be working well at the moment though, and I have embraced various pockets, clips, and other accessories in my quest for something a little different to my typical standard notebooks of the past. Inserts are your standard dot grid, blank, and grid, though I’ll be adding a lined version soon. The slimmer, taller nature of the regular inserts seems to suit me fairly well, and a 0.5mm gel pen has turned out to be the tool of choice (currently a couple of Uniball Signo DX, however there are quite a few 0.7mm Pentel Energels’ that emerged from the second drawer when this all began).

The Olive leather on the Traveler’s cover is certainly something to behold, and is already showing a little lived-in wear which looks fantastic, and will no doubt become even better with age. I do have a matching Traveler’s Company pen loop attached, which is 50:50 both useful and annoying, though I think it will stay given its utility. I of course also could not go past Mal’s perfect monogramming for that personal touch — love it.

You can say I’m very much enjoying the change so far.

Hobonichi Weeks 2024 Hardcover Planner

This one I’m a little less sure about. Not because I have any doubts about the planner itself, just what I’ll use it for. I have a few ideas, and they are mainly around the wellness/habit tracking type of area, and I’ve been noting down some ideas over the past month or so.

I seem to have mostly settled on a combination of personal development/self-improvement/wellness journal/health/habit tracker. I lump them all together because I’d like it to be more than a simple tracker, yet terms like “wellness” though valid, give me Instagram snake oil/supplement seller — vibes. Whilst I realise that sweeping generalisation is unfair; I simply cannot comfortably call this anything ”wellness”, and it will be more than simply a healthy habits’ tracker.

So, in the interests of something meaningful and relevant to the task at hand, the working title which has meandered its way into my consciousness: my TG37 Journal. This is simply based upon the writing of James Clear on “tiny gains”, and the “1% better every day providing a 37-fold improvement at year end” theory. We’ll see how things go.

For my first foray into Hobonichi land, I went with a cover design by Japanese illustrator Hiroko Kubota, called Another night of falling star sparklers. I was looking for something a little unique and upon seeing a shared birth year with the cover designer, it seemed a pretty good fit.

I think the challenge here will be not overthinking things, though it has indeed been a while since I’ve entertained the structure of a dated planner in my analogue tools. Overall, I’d say I am fairly optimistic though.

Wrapping Up

It can be a little funny putting together a post like this, in that when summarised on a page, what feels like a significant change in reality, perhaps doesn’t sound as grandiose when outlined on a blog. Then again, it isn’t meant to be either. Our interests, plans, and realities take many forms, and how we document this is unique to each of us. Thankfully, we have as many options for tools as there are approaches to doing it.

I hope the finish to your 2023 is a good one, and 2024 is looking promising as well — however you intend to plan, log, track, or document your own journey.