“One True” Planner Sighting

I’m currently reading One True Thing by Anna Quindlen and came across a passage having to do with a datebook (no brand associated, though one can perhaps assume a Filofax, based on the mention of an included map of the London Underground, or maybe that’s just my assumption, though one should never assume…). 

To avoid any copyright issue, I will paraphrase the passage:

Someone gives the main character a datebook, which at first goes unused.  She flips through the blank pages just thinking about the possibility those empty pages could represent.  Describing the empty pages, she is looking back, so the narrator mentions that in present day, she uses the datebook, would be lost without it.  Her friend says she is anal about the use of this datebook, that the reason behind it is to bring order to a chaotic world.  The main character, however, states that it’s just become habit the way one eats corn on the cob in one direction or another.

Also, she “archives” her pages by placing each year into an envelope, sealing it, and marking it with the date.  She never looks back on her pages, and anyone who might, could gleam that she’s a busy woman who prefers to use black ink instead of blue.

I have a few comments on this passage:

• One of the sweetest moments in a planner’s life is the possibility that lies at the start of a new year and blank pages
• I would also be lost without my planner
• Many people call me anal; it is true; I admit it
• I myself use a planner to bring order to a chaotic world; how else would I do that?
• The only way to eat corn on the cob is left to right, moving down the cob, not up (there is a “correct” way)
• Here we have someone who never needs to refer back to her archived pages; that is unusual
• Most of us are "busy" in some form or another, even if it isn’t documented in a planner
• No one has introduced this woman to the joy of color coding

Happy planning!