I’ve always been the girlie that needs her planner. I need to write it down. I need to feel my pen glide across the
page. This is my favorite time of year because I re-up on my planner, stickers and journals. I don’t deviate when it comes to my journals; that is set at a Moleskine softcover. I alternate colors so I can easily identify which one is which (by year or use; I have personal journal, a work journal and a dream journal).

I can be a bit more flexible with my planners which isn’t saying much because I’m likely to have an emotional breakdown if I spend weeks finalizing a new planner to try and then dislike it so much upon laying hands and eyes on it. I’ve had an emotional breakdown….as recently as two years ago. *shivers* It was a rough night but we pivoted the next day.

I need a physical planner in conjunction with my digital to-do list and calendar. Yes, I might be doing a lot in some ways but it helps keep me on task in this ADHD world that I live in. The downside? It’s easy for me to be turned off from a planner and never want to use it again, even if I had been using it for some time. (sighs anew in neuro-divergent)

Last year, I tried the Clever Fox undated planner. It was different; it wasn’t everything I needed still, coming off of 3 years of using the passion planner but it was functional and I did like the ability to skip pages without guilt or actually having a stack of pages you have to find a cute way to disguise in between activity. But, still I wanted to have a better relationship with my planner than I did with the Clever Fox.

Enter the Hobonichi Techo. Japanese stationary is the god tier that we all aspire to so I decided maybe, I was grown enough to venture outside. It’s smaller than I’m accustomed to – I usually go for full sized planners and this was the size of my hand. The Techo is a daily; with a monthly page for each month in the front of the planner. I’ve read through a few of the quotes and I’ve really enjoyed them; juxtapose this with the Passion Planner that I moved away from after years because the quotes were getting stale but were from people I didn’t respect or admire. *coughs* Real ones, know me well enough to know I’m not going to do kindly to quotes from past Presidents, colonizers and racists as “inspiration”.

Arguably; I don’t know all of the folks quoted but so far it’s been a nice mix of writers, directors, poets and artists who’s work I’ve already engaged with. I have the opportunity to learn a lot more culturally about Japan by looking up the authors of the quotes. Hopefully nothing bad comes up because, I’m weary.

I adore the moon phase tracker and that the paper is thin but high quality. My pens aren’t bleeding through even though I did accidentally use a brush tip pen and ruin one of the squares for the month – I like how my pens feel on the page.

I’ll use this for work mostly and keep my clever fox undated planner for my personal projects and daily routines. I’m hoping I can stay consistent in my usage.