Am I more disorganized than ever? Yes.

 

Will notebooks solve this problem? No.

 

Am I using them to cope with life? Yes.

 

And here are a few things I’m using this year:

 

  • My Traveler’s Notebook, with my dated insert for memory keeping as well as one for my planner
  • My catch-all A5 journal for everything else
  • A Hibino that I’ve entered into with complete joy

 

 

I love my Traveler’s Notebook, the feel of the leather in my hand, the thickness of it, how I can move things in and out as I need to—although it’s fairly rare that I do. I’ve been using the vertical dated planner for memory keeping, and it’s one of my favourite ways to spend a few minutes at night. It is the collector of my favourite tiny pieces of ephemera and stickers and the best parts of my week.

 

 

I started a new journal for 2025, and the cover is already filling up with stickers. No better way to start a new year. I guess there might actually be better ways to spend a new year (vacation somewhere warm? Watching someone else clean my house while I lean back with a book and a cup of tea? Eating Indian take-out?) but this was pretty good, too.

 

 

I love the feeling of a new journal: It’s clean and flat and fresh and new. It slides so cleanly into my bag along with my book, and it’s full of potential. Ready for me to mess up! I also love how it feels as it gets thicker and more wrinkly and heavier. I love it all.

 

 

Naomi is 7 and full of spice and ideas and very loud laughter, and this year we have matching Hibinos. It is a complete gift, for a mama to have a daughter. There are challenges, of course, but there are daily delights that I never expected, and there is nothing like the way a mama loves her girl.

 

It’s been so much fun to share this quasi-daily journalling with Naomi. It is, as you might expect, very low-stakes. We are embracing spelling errors and mis-stamped stamps, and we are drawing pictures, and basically just having fun filling up the pages with washi tape and stickers and whatever else we might scrounge up in my office/closet.

 

 

In any case, these are my notebooks for the new year. There’s not been much change from years past, and, as is likely very clear, not too much thought—they are things that have been working for me in these past years, and something new as well, which is always fun. I have a few planners and notebooks in the wings, maybe to be picked up partway through the year, depending on how things are going. Right now my A5 journal is my catch-all for everything, but I’m always thinking about my now defunct reading journal, and trying to pick that up again. But, having scuttled my way across the line into 2025, what I have in hand is what I’m going to be using, and we’re going to see how it all turns out.

 

I love this season of life, with my babies at home with me, piled up in bed reading books together, chicken nuggets in volume, our small entourage schlepping ourselves into the pool changing room, loose socks trailing behind us—and if I don’t have as much time as I’d like to fill up my pages and planners beautifully, it is a price I’m glad to pay.

 

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January 13, 2025 — Liz Chan

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