Well Planned Life

Several years ago, I didn’t know about Filofax . I remember being in one of my planner crisis modes—I liked the planner I was using okay enough (truth be told, I loved that planner for the space it provided, the slimness, and how professional it looked), but it was no longer serving my needs (despite the love). I didn’t exactly know what my needs were, just that I needed something better, more conducive to working on projects and long-term planning and something a little more fulfilling. A friend of mine used the ring-bound planners and swore by them. At the time, I didn’t like them, mainly because I felt that the rings got in the way of writing and that the binders were too bulky (compared to my slim planner). She was the one who introduced me to Filofax, which is slightly odd, if only because she didn’t have tons of them. (Obviously, since then she has bought a few more.) I don’t remember the exact date or time or even the situation in which she got me to look at the website . But o...

I’m currently Reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (review to come). In it, she talks about her year of finding happiness through various tasks for herself. One of these tasks is to remember birthdays. Here is what she has to say: “Many of my friends were on Facebook, which tracks birthdays, but many weren’t, so I had to send out a bunch of emails to ask for birthdays. While I was at it, I decided to update my entire address book and copy the information onto my computer. For years, I’d been adding and crossing out entries in the pages of my Filofax, which were now practically illegible and dangerously irreplaceable.” I am enjoying this book so much. It’s full of tidbits and information that I can use towards my own happiness project (a post regarding this will be forthcoming). But of course, reading this passage is enough to make me happy for an entire week. I’d love to hear more about she uses it.

One of the things I like to do is knit. After “knitting” for almost four years, I’m still a beginner, and this is simply because I rarely have time to do it. When I first started, it was summer of 2007. I made a scarf for myself and one for three of my friends for Christmas. That was the most knitting I have ever done in a “short” amount of time. I have about three or four projects started but have yet to finish any of them. Each one I wanted to complete by a specific day for a specific event. So I’d start, work furiously on it for a while to try and make that deadline, get a few days from the deadline and come to the realization that it would never be finished on time, abandon the project and move on to something else, thinking all the while that I’d still finish that first project later. But then time could never be found. Or, which was more than likely, something else would come up that I’d prefer to work on, like reorganizing my planner and/or writing a blog post about something to...

Since I’ve been talking so much about writing lately , I thought I’d share some of my journals with you. Basically, I write in my journal as a way to express my thoughts and feelings without always dumping them on someone else (mainly my husband). I try to do it several times a week, though sometimes it’s just not possible. I do keep a list in my Filofax of topics I want to write about in my journal so that if I don’t have the time, I can remember what it is I want to write about. When I was not feeling well a month or so ago and I was so down , I wrote in my journal every morning. It was a form of therapy for me, and I don’t think I would have made it through that very rough time without my journal. I don’t have a ritual when it comes to writing, though I prefer it to be quiet (some un-distracting music is nice) and I usually have a cup of coffee by my side. I can’t write in front of the television, it just distracts me too much, and I can’t write when I’m pressed for time. I end ...

Yesterday’s post got me thinking about a piece I wrote back in 2005. The conversation mentioned below took place in 2000, and since then I have thought about it a lot, thought about what is meaningful to me, what I can throw myself into and call my own. I have since come up with something that could be said about me, something I am passionate about, something that really illustrates all that I think and see and do. I’ve updated the original piece just a little for this blog but the meaning is the same. I once met a photographer through my previous job who wanted to capture the life and essence of people’s spirits. How he portrays people is by knowing what their passion is. His of course is photography. So, when the company hired him to do some freelance work, he wanted to know, “What are you passionate about? Everybody is passionate about something.” One of my coworkers knew his answer right away: “Fishing. I love to fish. I could fish every day. I could spend hours at a time doing it...

Over the weekend I finally saw Julie and Julia . For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s about writer Julie Powell’s struggle with finding something meaningful in life as she nears her thirtieth birthday (played by the cute Amy Adams ). She loves to cook, and this leads her to a year of blogging about her adventures of cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. The movie also portrays bits and pieces of Julia Child’s life (played by the very talented Meryl Streep ). The movie goes back and forth between the two lives and stories, but it’s done in such a way that where one story leaves off, the other begins in a related fashion. It was well done, in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, probably more than I should have given that it wasn’t a “great” movie, nor was the story itself “great.” But it was entertaining and humorous (though not laugh-out-loud-funny) and I enjoyed every morsel of the film. I got to thinking why this was so – it’s not a ground-breaking movie by any means...

It’s only recently that I started archiving my past inserts. I used to keep only the previous year’s pages but after having read how other people keep their pages for years , I thought maybe I’d start keeping mine as well. I confess that my system isn’t formal, nor is it unique in any way. But it works for me, at least for now. I created my archival system back in June when I completely overhauled not just my system, but everything Filofax-related that I own. On New Year’s Day, I set up my Malden for all of 2011 . This meant that I also pulled out anything relating to 2010 and put those pages into my “Past” binder , a Personal black Guildford. Keeping these pages in a binder on my bookshelf allows for easy access to anything from the past year I might need. Since using the daily pages, however, it’s impossible for me to keep everything in one binder – there are just too many pages . So I put only the last half of the daily pages in my “Past” binder and put the rest into my archival...

Reader Rori asked me how I do my weekly and daily planning. My work schedule is done on a monthly basis. Typically, I know which days, evenings and weekend days I will work, but where I’ll be during my work hours is what is specifically scheduled on a monthly basis. I am a public librarian so my time is split between manning the reference desk and office time. We get our schedule for the upcoming month a week or so before it begins. Because it is done this way, it is necessary for me to look at my upcoming months in that format. When scheduling personal events, I tend to look at the monthly view first. I do this so that I don’t over-schedule myself for any particular weekend, especially when I’m working. Since working Sundays is currently done on a volunteer basis, I generally pick one during a weekend when I don’t have a lot going on (though in truth they have to be chosen so far in advance that I don’t usually have much planned at that point anyway), and seeing my time in the month...

…New me? Happy New Year! If you’re like me, you’ve been anxiously awaiting 2011, if only to start your new planner or refills. I have been looking forward to this activity all week. I’ve been mulling the options in my mind for several weeks. I think I have come up with a solution that I will enjoy, though it’s not much different from my current set up. Note: I apologize in advance for the length of this post – it was the only way to accurately describe every last detail of my planner. You might want to grab a cup of coffee or tea and maybe a cookie or biscuit before reading. Upon request, I will go into detail about how my Filo is set up and how I use it. It’s been a while since I’ve done this , and though things haven’t changed too much, there are some things that have, so why not? Thus, here we go: I’m currently using my personal black Malden as my every day planner. I don’t have anything in the zip pocket in the front . I have some ideas of what could go in there, but anything...