Becoming a Planner Girlie
Ascending this astral plane into one where I'm put together & organized
All my life, I’ve wanted to be a planner girlie.
The obsession can be blamed on Livejournal’s communities such as jr___nal or organizers which I became obsessed with as a young child of the internet.
I was obsessed with one girl named operatingroom whose posts on the community organizers had me GAGGED each time she posted. I longed for a red colored weekly Moleskine planner just like hers and begged my mum to buy me both that planner as well as the Stabilo fineliners she used.
Unfortunately, my mum told me Moleskines were simply too expensive so I was offered a cheaper planner from the book store instead. She relented on the fineliners and bought me the shorter, cheaper versions instead because she said I’d never finish the full size ones.
Unfortunately, she was right because I still have the short fineliners over 10 years later and they aren’t used up… Whoops.
Here is a page of what the elusive operatingroom’s planner looked like so you can get an idea of the aesthetic of 2008 Lian:
With my new dollar planner in hand, I was determined to become a planner girlie too.
As I unearthed these photos from Livejournal, I also was able to find one of my own posts on the organizers community. Who wants to see 12 year old Lian’s planner? (Spoiler alert: a 12 year old girl has literally nothing to plan).
Ever since I’ve unearthed this deep longing to become a planner girlie, I’m always plagued with anxiety towards the end of the year.
You see, the problem is that I always wished to be someone organized and put together, but I actually hated planning or organizing my life. I am notoriously horrible at organizing and you might gasp to find out that I actually just wing all of my deadlines.
I just kind of have a vague idea in my head of when everything is due and then I simply work harder when I feel a sense of panic.
So each year, I would buy a planner, feel immense pressure to use it, and then abandon all hope. The last time this happened was in 2022 when I tried to hop on the Hobonichi hype train.
I bought myself a Hobonich techo, which is a highly coveted daily planner. I was convinced this was the year that I would do it! I’d finally achieve my dreams and become a planner girlie! I started out so strong! I was filled with joy and excitement! I even posted about it on this Substack!
Here are some pages, you can find the rest in this post from May 2022:
Lo and behold, I abandoned the planner by the summer. Daily pages was simply too much and I had bitten off more than I could chew.
Disillusioned and giving up hope of ever becoming a planner girlie, I abandoned all ideas of a planner last year. My lifelong dream was over…
Until September rolled around and Hobonichi released their new planner designs for 2024 and we were back to square one…
When I tell you I spent weeks… opening and closing the Yoseka website, please know I am not lying.
I kept telling myself, “I'm simply not a planner girlie, when will I learn my lesson?”
So I texted my friend Lily who is super into Hobonichi. Unfortunately she knew that I simply wanted to be enabled…
And Lily was right (she always is) because it only took me three more days before I was back texting her…
All this is to say, I DID IT AGAIN THIS YEAR. HAH!
I’m doing a couple things differently though in an attempt to have a successful year:
I got a weekly planner instead of a daily planner
I’m just going to carry it everywhere
I promise to not be too precious with it
We’re now into February and so far I’ve actually been keeping up! I’ve changed my mindset from “I want to be a planner girlie but I just am not” into
So, without much ado, here is the present set up for this year so I can live out my dreams of being operatingroom. Please bear with me (or just close this newsletter since there’s nobody forcing you to read this).
Here’s the cast of characters:
The planner I got is a plain red Hobonichi weeks which I’m covering in a cute plastic cover that has cute designs on it. Did I mention that it’s cute? I also added beads to the page market ribbons and added an extra hedgehog page marker too.
Here are some pages from inside the planner: