friday 🕸️ (Patreon)

hi everyone, i hope you're all doing okay. still poorly this week, so no video, as you might have seen on the youtube community page. hopefully next week i'll be less sniffly, and my voice won't be so unreliable. 2024 seems to be the year of the sore throat/lost voice, so far 🥲

this week i've mostly been resting, packing shop orders (thank you!), and working in my tn system. i filmed a little flip through for you, so you can see the progress, and i'll explain a little below 📑

i ended up picking up a common planner to go with my commonplace booklets- they've been pretty heavily discounted recently, so i was glad to nab one to test out. the only colour left was this sleepy blue, and tbh it's growing on me- it reminds me of mist and gloomy days. very glad it's a soft, muted blue rather than a brighter sky blue.

i picked it up to give myself some extra space- the 64 page booklet is perfect for commonplacing and daily journalling, adding in lots of photos, but sometimes i find myself wanting to write a little more than i have space for each day. obviously i date the pages myself, so i could always allocate a little more room or stop dating them, but i really like the layout and i think the dated pages (as they are currently) help hold me accountable and keep me moving through the booklet 💭 not quite sure how to explain it, but hopefully that makes some sort of sense. i like it how it is, basically.

the addition of the common planner gives me that little extra room, with calendars, weekly pages, and 120 notes pages at the back. it also has a cal-index and space for setting quarterly goals- not sure how/if i'll use these yet. im using the calendar the same way i always have; birthdays, appointments, events and small notes from the month, with some stickers added after. this is very much a "don't fix what isn't broken" so nothing ever changes 🫡

for the weekly pages, i'm back keeping a running to-do list. i didn't make many to-do lists when i was in filofax, but the summer always makes me feel a little hazy so it's nice to keep a closer eye on things. the weekly spreads are laid out like the hobonichi weeks- so the left has space to write for each day, and the right is a grid page. im keeping the lists on the right, as i used to, and the additional notes from my days on the left. i like this layout- if i find myself wanting to keep detailed sleep notes again, it would be easy to fit it in here with everything else.

i've been setting up the notes pages at the back of the book for references, splitting them down into sections according to category. at the moment i have space for recipes/food references, and video games, but i'm also hoping to set up areas for special interests, sleep stuff (notes for appointments, etc), autism things, and probably some work notes, too. not sure what else! with 120 pages i probably have room for 10 or 12 sections, depending.

there we go! that's how i'm organising things at the moment. i'm enjoying it all very much, both the lovely booklets and also the system, the size, etc. standard tn seems to strike a nice balance between having plenty of room (because of the height), while not being too overwhelming or intimidating (because of the width). it's really nice. i'll still be continuing with my experimentation in the hopes it could be a better long term solution than the filofax, but we're only a week or two in, so we'll have to see how things shape up. but so far, so good 😌📓 looking forward to carrying on.

sorry for all the words, but i hope it was interesting (even if only to a few of you)! will be back with a video next week 📹✨

take care and speak soon, friends x