Analogue System 2024

I haven’t done this in a while (i.e. years), but I thought I would share my vague plans for my notebooks in 2024.

Traveler’s Notebook

I continue on with my Traveler’s Notebook, sometimes bringing it out into the world with me, writing my random thoughts, but the real reason this notebook is so close to my heart is the weekly vertical insert, where I use my new and old favourite stationery to its glory, interspersed with life’s events and thoughts.

Life Noble Note (or an A5 notebook in general)

My A5 notebook is my brain dump and rambling and heavy duty life notebook. I can write pages and pages one day and nothing the next, I have pages of washi tape samples and photos and receipts taped in. This one gets bulky with love and life and carries scars and laugh lines and tears inside and out.

I don’t worry about how pretty the pages look, but set for myself the external goal of filling them up, so as to have things on the page instead of swirling around in my brain.

Hobonichi 5-Year

I continue on with my Hobonichi 5-year, a cherished family journal. I have seen lots of beautiful ones, people with plans on using one ink colour for all of a year, and then a new ink colour every year after, or who fill up their spaces with lovely and neat handwriting. Mine is a little more chaotic, and I mostly record memorable events, starts of school years, Halloween costumes, birthday celebrations, or totally random quotes from the kids, funny happenings.

I could not recommend a journal or diary like this more highly. You only get better and better at choosing things to remember or to write about, silly delights or tiny stories, and as time passes these small histories become parts of family lore—the legend of when Papa had egg in his beard that looked like boogers, or when I dropped off Naomi at a birthday party and had two hours all by myself out in the world, or one disastrous round of Mario Kart.

Hobonichi Techo A6

I’ve almost always had a Techo, mainly because I work in a stationery store, but sometime last year I moved from a Cousin to a Techo for daily life, and it has been working well for me. The smaller size makes it more portable, and I use it as a total scratch pad: to-do lists, homework assignments, vocabulary words, priority emails, project plans, a scribble distraction for an unruly baby or some disorganized mama on the phone trying to sign up for something that is going to cost more money and time than it’s worth.

I also, I kid you not, write brief notes about what I do in a day (swimming lesson! Birthday party! Trip to Costco!) because my brain is a sieve and I can’t seem to remember life even as recently as yesterday. I have ambitious journaling plans, dreaming of Writing It All Down For Posterity—and sometimes I need a brief flip through to remember what exactly I did last weekend, these weekends and weeks flying past me so quickly.

And this one, in 2023, was a great companion. Low key writing. Great paper, good for fountain pens. A bit of life, a bit of doodling.

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And that’s it, or mostly. I swim in and out of different notebooks in different seasons. This year ahead we have big and small plans and dreams, and I’m bringing my journals along for the ride.