I am, as I’ve said, an incompetent resolution-keeper, but I’ve made a big 2020 resolution that I hope I can keep: to write on this poor lonely blog once a week, or at the very least twice a month. I’m trying not to make promises I can’t keep (e.g., “use LA Fitness membership”), so I figured I’d better not commit to a weekly posting schedule when my department is currently bracing itself for the usual springtime projectpocalypse.
Anyway. I was going to have a whole post on New Year’s day about my new 2020 planners because I’m gross but then I went off on a boondoggle about books and ended up writing too much, so the planners got pushed back. Today, though, I’m home early from work because of the first snow of the season (and also hoping that the lame Maryland weather can keep its shit together long enough to stay properly cold for the next couple of months) and I don’t have anything else to do, so here we go!
Planners of Christmas Present
BN’s stupid stickers aside, LOOK AT THESE PRECIOUS BABIES OMG (I told you I was gross). The big one lives at work, but the little one gets carried around in whatever bag I happen to be using. Last year the planners all went on sale before the new year, so this year I stalked BN’s planner shelves for the better part of the last week of December and discovered that the dated planners were 50% off when I caved and went to buy the little one and it rang up at the sale price. Then I went back to the shelf and found out that the big planner I’d been keeping an eye on hadn’t been sold out like I thought; it was merely hiding behind another planner. When I went back through the line I ended up plaguing the same cashier with my dumb planner stories, because life can occasionally be cute.
idk why llamas are suddenly in vogue but I hope they stay that way because these planners are everything I ever needed. I’m a nut so I waited till literally New Year’s day to finally peel off the stickers, but it was so satisfying. The only thing that kinda makes me sad is that my last two work planners had a nice little chart in the back that I could color-code according to how good or bad my days were and my current work planner doesn’t have that, so the studio must have discontinued it, but I suppose you can’t have everything. On the other hand it was kind of a pain to color in a little box every day (I know, I know, I’m embarrassing) and I often forgot and had to try to guess how I was feeling for several days in a row, but now I don’t have to worry about that!
Planners of Christmas Past
I arrived way late to the planner party because even though I’m a stationery geek and I loved the idea of having a planner (because I love notebooks and never seem to have enough of them), I never actually bought one until January 12, 2018. For anyone impressed with my super specific memory, I should probably mention here that I actually thought I bought it in August 2018 and literally the only reason I know that I bought it in January is that I wrote it down.
Because apparently I somehow knew – and I actually do remember this part – that I would want to know exactly when I got on the planner bandwagon. Of course, having bought the planner, I then proceeded to leave it at home the following day. As for why I finally hopped on the Organized People train, I was working at Papyrus, the planners were right across the aisle from the registers so they were literally staring me in the face, they were all 50% off, I really wanted a cute little booky thing to carry around, and the one that I picked was SO FUCKING CUTE.
I mean okay one of my friends said it looked like a Bible but even so it was absolutely perfect. On a slightly less shallow note, I actually did have a good reason that I’m pretty sure I came up with after I bought the planner, which was that I was using Google Calendar to keep track of everything and it occurred to me that I was very much not okay with Google having my entire social calendar and work schedule in the palm of its algorithms. Then at the end of January 2018 I started my current job and realized I was going to need some way of keeping all my work projects straight, and gleefully trotted over to the BN next door to buy a work planner. The rest, as they say, is history.
2020 Personal Planner Goals
I will:
- Use the planner to keep track of appointments and social events.
- Use the planner to track my reading.
I will not:
- Forget to use the planner and then turn it into a retroactive diary.
- Leave the planner at home.
- Wonder why I need a planner and give up.
358 days stand between me and the end of the year. LET’S DO THIS THING!!!
