2015

*The third installment, written for Wisteria & Sunshine in May. It is interesting to look back and see how the ideas for my Daybook were beginning to emerge. And now, I am a few days away from putting my Wild Simplicity Daybook on the shelves of my Etsy shop!

In the original post, I created several poll questions, which don’t work here. But do please share what you are longing for in a planner/notebook. I am always interested to hear such details, and will be designing new booklets on a regular basis and will be able to incorporate new ideas quite easily…one of the beauties of both creating and using the Daybook that has evolved from its beginnings first written about here…*

“And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one’s happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant — it is not fit — it is not possible that it should be so.”

-Elinor Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen

Since encountering a young woman’s unexpected wisdom about notebooks, I’ve been “bewitched” by the idea of the One Daybook for Lesley. If you take a journey through my thoughts on the subject of daybooks just here at Wisteria & Sunshine, you will see all the twists and turns I’ve taken. I’m pretty clear now, tho’, on my desire to keep all of the household and daily tasks in my Circle of Days and most everything else in the yet-to-be-created Daybook.

It would really just be the furthering of what I am trying to do in my home and online and every corner of my life…pare down, consolidate, integrate…

Here’s are the approaches I am narrowing in towards, amongst all of the many choices out there in the world. Mine have certain requirements, some universal, some just for me. The first priority for me is that the ingredients be earth-friendly, which greatly narrows down the field. the second is that the whole thing be versatile and adaptable (to my ever-changing whims…ahem…needs and creativity). The third is the trickiest, because I want to be able to produce it in quantity. If it was just something I was making for myself, it would be so much simpler!

-Something I am playing with is the idea of a selection of booklets, or just groupings of paper, that can be easily and only temporarily bound within a fabric/cardboard cover. I’ve experimented with string and ribbon, but they have their drawbacks. I know that elastic of some sort would work and believe that these are put together that way, but I’ve yet to figure it out. I was glad to find that page, to see how someone else is manifesting the idea of an assortment of types of pages put together in one notebook, and will keep working on my own. The cover could have a pocket or two.

–My antique portfolio inspired my current favorite approach, which includes a pocket to hold a selection of loose pages (I really do prefer the freedom of individual pages and can imagine that pocket holding some watercolor sheets, cardstock, lined pages and blank ones) and a section for a pad of paper or a clip to hold the equivalent in loose pages.

-A more usual planner style, bound with rings, like you’ve seen many versions of here over the years (including this video-password “daybook”). It is certainly versatile and more straightforward and easy to create…but I continue to feel unfriendly towards binder rings lately. : )

Now it is your turn to tell me about what you are seeking in a Daybook. Let us disagree with Elinor’s pronouncement and believe there is one Single Constant and Particular approach (if not notebook!). After all, Elinor did end up with her SC & P, didn’t she? Please share what your ideal planner/daybook would look like and/or what you are using and happy with at the moment. If you’ve stayed with the same approach over the years, we would love to know the details.

For those who aren’t in the mood to put words together into a reply, I will fashion some poll questions that might give us an understanding of these ponderings…

With paper heart fluttering, I will be looking for your responses as we consider how to bloom with our ways of organizing and cherishing certain details of our lives…

-Wisteria & Sunshine

May 2015

(a post from Wisteria & Sunshine from a few months ago…sorry the fonts look a bit small, something in the transfer to this page…enlarging the page helps!)

“Look to this Day!

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes

Yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day;

Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!”

-Sanskrit poem

Looking through my long row of daybooks and journals, I pulled out the ones I had used for at least more than a few days. : )  The oldest was a simple cloth-covered journal I took on a trip to England in 1981 and that is where I found the lines from Look to This Day. And it seems to me that those words sum up pretty nicely what we are doing when we turn to our daybooks.

In my younger days, and off and on since, it was mostly to look back on a day or trip or experience, for memory’s sake. I didn’t feel the need to organize my days until my second son was born. Since that time, I would say that my daybooks have ranged far and wide in their purposes…from journaling to household organization to calendars to systems of all sorts to scrapbook-like cutting and pasting….usually with a separate book for each purpose.

Pulling each daybook out of the cupboard, I could remember what drew me to each in the first place and why I gave it up. Sometimes, the reason was a material one…the binder was too wide to carry and use, the paper or designs didn’t please me, it wasn’t adaptable enough and soon felt confining…

More often, or at least as often, I think the reason was within me…overthinking…perfectionism…or just not knowing what I really wanted and needed to be putting down with pen and paper. And I can see now that, for me, too many places and choices (too many containers, really!) kept me from focusing and deepening with the practice of Looking to My Days. It is not everyone’s challenge, is it? Some women seem to rest easy with just grabbing the nearest notebook and getting on with what they need to put down in it. Or they’ve had a life-long love affair with their Filofax. Perhaps they get real pleasure from seeking out a new approach…I know I used to.

At this Rosehip season, tho’,  I’d like to hone in, and that is why it feels right to spend more time and thought than I have in the past finding the best “container” for the papery part of life. My cupboard of notebooks is full. I’d like to look back in a few decades and recognize the year I settled in with my own particular way of planning and capturing and chronicling. For my days to feel “well-lived”, I must spend less time figuring things out and where to put them, and more time doing and growing and being.

Look to this day:

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendour of achievement

Are but experiences of time.

What has your own journey with pen and paper looked like?