in fond memory of my faithful planner

Today I ran out of pages in my 2007-2008 Moleskine Weekly Notebook. It was a strange realization: flipping through the past couple of weeks that haven’t required any scheduling at all, finding Sunday, January 4th at the bottom of the page, turning to write down the time of my flight tomorrow, and then finding that the neat little rectangle for Monday, January 5th didn’t exist. Suddenly, the planner that had carried me through so many hectic weeks was obsolete. I honestly felt a little helpless. This planner had faithfully kept all of my calculus assigned problems and suffered through repeated notes and reminders (“Call about getting the DVD out of the AC vent!!!!” and “Declare Major!!!!” can be found for multiple consecutive weeks). It held to-do lists (buy present for Nicole, write Merchant of Venice essay), shopping lists (coat, rain boots, cereal, mug, safety pins), and even a list of things that I hope to do before I die (1. Fall hopelessly, helplessly in love. 2. Write my novel. 3. Travel to Italy. 4. Discover something. 5. Live in a city. 6. Be a mother.). I couldn’t deny that the lovely leather cover was well-worn and the edges were smudged with pencil lead and multiple colors of ink. It was clearly time for me to move on, but the more I flipped through the pages, the more I realized that this once-elegant little notebook represented my past in a very real way; tossing it aside to ring in a new year and a new semester would be more meaningful than I could have expected.

Even so, I am looking forward to purchasing a new, though identical, Moleskine Weekly Notebook for 2009-2010. I’ll open it up and write my name where it says ”In case of loss, please return to: _____ ” on the first page. On the next line, the Moleskine reads “As a reward: $ _____,” and I had filled in “good karma ” in my old planner. I probably still won’t be able to offer much more than that in the year ahead…some things don’t change. However, some things do, and I can say with certainty that my new Moleskine Weekly Notebook will be right there with me for every step of 2009 to see those changes and record them in a sophisticated and organized fashion, week by week.

So much to do, so little time!