Planning

Happy New Year! It’s the second day of 2020, and I’m sure you want to know all about my planner for the year.

Yes, you do.

I thought about it, but decided not to buy Filofax refills this year. My love for Filofax will never die, but I do like to try something new every so often. My second-favorite day planners are made by a company called Gallery Leather. Barnes and Noble sells them, but this year, they didn’t have any colors that I liked. I could have ordered one online, but I was in Barnes and Noble and I wanted to cross something off my to-do list, so I bought a Moleskine pocket planner, because they had them in stock and because I liked the compact size and the pretty red color.

This isn’t actually my first Moleskine planner. I had one in 2017. It was a yellow fabric-covered pocket size page-a-day planner from their Peanuts collection, a gift from my sister. Normally, I have to (HAVE TO) choose my own planner, but I loved this one and I used it for the entire year. I loved the yellow cover with the picture of Sally jumping rope, and the words “I have a new philosophy: Life goes on.” It’s a good philosophy. And I love Sally. Not as much as Lucy or Snoopy or Charlie Brown or Linus, but I do love Sally. I still have that planner. I still have all of my old planners.

The 2017 Peanuts Moleskine, as much as I liked it, had a few flaws. The cover was light yellow fabric, as I mentioned--very pretty but very susceptible to dirt and impossible to clean. My solution to this was to carry the planner inside a ziploc bag. This worked very well, and I enjoyed imagining my millennial coworkers going out with their friends and telling them about the crazy older lady they work with, who keeps her planner in a ziploc bag. But it was also a little too big. The page-a-day format is nice, but it makes a thick book that’s a lot to carry around every day.

In 2018, I bought another Gallery planner, in bright pink. It’s a near-perfect planner. If the pages were crisp white rather than off-white, and if it had a pocket, it would be just right. But it’s still pretty good and I’ll probably get another one next year. For 2019, I used the French-language pocket planner that I bought in Montreal.  It was quite a nice planner, and very durable (the cover still looks very nice) but I didn’t love the complicated page layout and I wouldn’t have bought another one, even en Anglais.

Wait, where was I?

Oh right. The Moleskine planner, the new one for 2020. I’ll begin with its virtues, which are considerable. It’s the perfect size, and it’s a beautiful color. It’s a week on one page, the left page; with the right side of the folio a lined, blank page. This is ideal for me--little notes and appointments on the calendar side, and my weekly to-do list on the blank page. Genius. It also has a bookmark ribbon (last year’s Franch planner didn’t have one, and I sorely missed this feature) and an elastic closure. The paper is beautiful, and it has a pocket in the back for cards and notes and my tiny tiny ruler. So it’s a pretty good planner. 8 out of 10.

Oh, of course, I’ll be HAPPY to tell you all about why I’m deducting two critical points.

First of all, I don’t know how to pronounce “Moleksine.” Is it “SKEEN” or “SKIN?” I don’t know, and if I hang around looking that sort of thing up, then when will I have time to write two-page essays about day planners? Did you ever think of that, Moleskeen or Moleskin or whatever your name is? DID YOU?

Secondly, the stickers. I don’t object to stickers per se. In fact, I like them very much. I was actually delighted to find three sheets of tiny stickers in the back of this planner. One sheet has letters and numbers, so I spelled out my name in stickers on the flyleaf. What’s more fun than that? Nothing. But then I looked more closely at the picture stickers, and found that there are at least 20 travel-themed stickers (suitcases, planes, boats, trains) but no work-themed stickers. I work a lot more than I travel. There were also lots of entertainment and leisure themed stickers (theater tickets, wine glasses, golf clubs, skis) but no book stickers. I’ve never been on skis, not even one time (a record that I hope and intend to maintain to my dying day), but I read all the time. And no cars! Bicycles and boats, planes and trains, but no cars, and no buses.

Who are these stickers for? People who fly around skiing and golfing and drinking but who don’t run errands or drive children around or work, that’s who. People who are right now in Aspen or St. Bart’s or Gstaad. Hey Moleskine: Call Ivanka. Let her know that I have her stickers. I can send them to her in Davos. (And tell her to tell her dad that it might be time to get off the golf course and get back to Washington to run the war that he just started.) And next time, add a page of stickers with little cars, and little grocery carts, and little tiny computers, and maybe a pair of running shoes or a baby stroller. People who have the kind of lives that your current sticker selection depicts have secretaries. They don’t need day planners.

I mean, really.

Oh, and Happy New Year!