One Thing

For the past three new years, I've debated with myself over whether or not to go all digital calender wise. And with each year I get a little closer to ditching the paper calender altogether, but I can't quite commit to it. I love the fact that it dings at me, sends me alerts and otherwise shakes into realizing that I have to be somewhere that day. I like that I can enter something once and have it repeat every 1,2 or 4 weeks, which saves me a lot of work entering things over and over. I like that it's on my phone, which means it's always with me, instead of lying forgotten on my desk. I love all of that. But when it comes down to it, I'm a list girl. And not a digital list girl. I'm a jot things down, sketch them out, physically cross them off the list kind of girl.
About halfway through last year I ditched my paper calender for everything except my chores list and started toting around blank books for all my to-dos, reminders and ideas and left the rest to the digital calender. And it worked, mostly. But after looking through the pages of my various blank books from the year I realized that I've been writing the same basic lists every week. Work to-do, home to-do, the week's menu and a slap dash little calender so that I could look at the whole week at once and know what the plan was. Other than the fact that I spent a chuck of every Monday rewriting all of this, I liked it, but having something ready for me would have been nicer.

So now it's time to make that "what calender" decision again. Ok, that time was a few weeks ago, but I can't find anything that's right for me. Maybe my brain works differently than most people because there is nothing out there for the "just need a little weekly calender and then have lots of room for lists" crowd. I was tempted by an Orla Kiely one because, well, because it was beautiful, but when will pointed out that it was tiny and had no space whatsoever for lists, I decided against. It was pretty though...

For now my notebook is holding up but it's pages are numbered and I have a feeling that it's not going to seem like 2011 until I go though my annual ritual of divvying up annual and monthly chores through the weeks and transferring birthdays and special dates in the hopes that this year I will get it together to send cards.

This is my mission for the week. To get my calender ready, which means I need to get myself a calendar, pronto. And unless something magically appears while I'm downtown this morning, well, I think I might just have to make one, if I can figure out templates on that program that used to be called Pagemaker when I was in college but has a different name now which I can't seem to remember. Oh, InDesign. That's it. I just looked on Will's computer. So, yes, if I can figure that out, then I guess I can just make one that fills all my requirements and have it printed and bound. Part of me wants to try out a DIY leather calender that arrived in my inbox via good old Martha, but for sanity sake and because I'm not sure where I could find some nice leather that wouldn't break the bank, I'm thinking of letting the good folks at Lulu.com do the job.

What do you do? Are you all digital or are you still a paper person? Have you found the perfect calender? Any recommendations before I spend my day in template land?

One Thing
A Monday habit. Share the one thing that you want to do this week, just for you. Tell us what you are working on in the comments and link back to your blog so we can see all the fun things you do!

So, what will you be up to this week?