I can’t quite decide if I’m proud of myself for only having four books to work through 2023 or if I really set myself up for disaster trying to work with so many. But they all have different purposes, I promise! Even if some of them have overlapping entries, i.e. goal breakdowns for the year. At least it’s easy to transfer between notebooks, though, since once one has my goals I can just copy and paste–except, you know, physically. With a pen. In my hand. (It gets tiring, I’m not going to lie.)
All right, first up with have the Many Moons planner, which was quite honestly an impulse buy when I went to Salem in November. But it was a planner I had been seeing for a couple of years already, and I decided to #treatmyself while I was on the trip, so into the shopping pile it went. My plan for it is to be a magical/tarot planner and journal. I intend to pull a tarot card every night and write the interpretation and journaling for it in each daily box in the weekly pages. On top of that, the book is full of fascinating articles and journaling prompts for each month. Again, some of them overlap–especially this and the Artist of Life journal, which I’ll talk about next–so certain things will be a bit repetitive, but I think that will make my thoughts stick better. I have a tendency to have all these grand thoughts, ideas, and feelings and somehow they just leak out of my ears and I forget about them. Then I wonder why something in my days is the exact same, even when I intended to make changes. (Are you confused? I’m kind of confused.) In general, though, the focus of this one will be all magical work and reflections, especially given that I’m planning to put greater focus on my practice this year.
Next we have the Artist of Life workbook, which I’ve used previously and I absolutely adore it. I actually thought I had only used it once, but when I was organizing my journals one day recently I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had two–2019 and 2020–in my stack. I skipped 2021 and 2022, so it was exciting when the 2023 edition arrived to see what changes had come to the workbook since I last used it. I am so excited to have somewhere to focus my goals and to really break down what I want and the steps to get there. I’m opting out of doing Ali Edward’s One Little Word course this year, but I still chose a word for myself (“nourish”), and the workbook is going to be an excellent way to see my word regularly as I do my daily habit tracker updates and weekly breakdowns.
Third is my Hobonichi Weeks. It’s my first time using a Weeks, and I did technically start it in December, but I’m happy to report that I’m absolutely obsessed. I’ve also made lists of goals for the year, a note to my word of the year, and any other running lists (blog posts, zine ideas, etc.) in the gridded pages in the back. It’s just–fun! I love the paper. I love the crinkle of the pages after I watercolor on them. I love how compact it is, so I don’t feel pressured to fill it with activities and whatnot. It feels perfect for me. Granted, it’s still early in the year, so we’ll see how I keep up with it throughout 2023, since I have yet to ever actually finish a planner, but I’m optimistic for sure.
And finally, my journal. My goal for the year is to journal at least one page in my Archer & Olive notebook every day, and the fact that it’s a traveler’s notebook size is really helping in that. I started the habit in December and surprised myself with the consistency I’ve achieved so far. It might not be every day, but it’s pretty damn close, I think. Especially as someone who, despite loving journaling, would go a month or two without prior to putting a focus on this habit like I’m trying to do. Like with the Hobonichi (and all of the notebooks, I suppose), we’ll see how it holds up throughout the year. At the very least, I would love to finish this notebook in particular. I started it in February 2021, and I’m just ready to move on to a new book.
Do you have any notebooks or journals (or both) for the year?
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