The Daily Plan-It?

GET IT???

My heart is pounding as I type this confession to you, my friends. I just added a 2024 planner to my cart. Why does that make my heart pound? Maybe it’s because, in the past, I have enthusiastically purchased premium priced yearly planners, recommended by very “together” people I wanted to grow up to be just like, with visions of transforming and transfiguring my life and becoming even more together than those poor hot messes I used to look up to could dream of. And then, sometimes, just 18 short months later, I have cracked said planner open for the first time, with great shame, to thumb through all of the blank and wasted days before tossing it in the garbage. Forty bucks and my aspirations in the trash. That probably explains why my heart is pounding right now. Or maybe it’s long Covid-induced tachycardia. Obviously I never had my shit together enough to go to medical school.

I have to give credit to my group chat girls, Ashley and

Kristen Bartlett

for mentioning yearly planners casually over text, like it wasn’t anything to have a friggin’ panic attack over. It seems like they just buy them and use them to, like, keep track of important appointments and to create to-do lists that will gradually draw them ever nearer to bigger things they wish to accomplish? Well, I’ll be damned! I mean, I probably actually will be damned if we’re being honest. And yet, I’m ready to take a chance again, as Barry Manilow famously sang in the hit theme song to the movie “Foul Play” starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase.

Here is the thing about me. I do really well when I am working off of a list of things I’m trying to bang out. I’m also, if I do say so myself, a pretty good manager of others in a work situation, because as I am constantly reminding some of my friends who really are not good managers yet they continually get hired to manage people and then come beeyotching to me about it not going well…you need to set clear expectations for what work you want to get done at the beginning of each day, then at the end of that day, look back together with your managee at the goals you set, which ones were met, which ones were not and why, and how you’re going to tackle them anew the next day, along with whatever new tasks you will assign. And you do that every day and you do it on a slightly bigger scale for every week and with a bigger picture for each month, and each quarter and every year. Seriously, it ain’t rocket science! Even though rocket scientists probably also do something similar to keep their rocket shit moving in the right direction.

But because my life is a bit different now than it was when I was being managed or managing someone while also simultaneously being managed by someone else in a much nicer office, I have fallen off the list wagon. Pretty hard. Like, maybe even herniated some discs? How would I know, as I said I am NOT A DOCTOR! I have been really lucky to do the podcast and other assorted things and they have definitely added up to almost a regular full-time job that has been enough to support me without shitting too many bricks. Only the smallest amount of bricks have been shat, and I am so profoundly grateful for that. I am also so grateful to my own mouth and brain and hands for hustling enough to keep it up, keep it up, keep it up. I am doing a thing! (I hate when people say that. Sorry if you’ve ever said it. I don’t mean you. It was cute when you said it. I’ve said it myself and I’m not mad at either of us, okay?)

I kind of feel like, because I have been so busy learning how to ride this unicycle and trying not to fall on my face, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about where I might be riding this unicycle TO? Like, it would be stupid of me to avoid eye contact with the thoughts in my own brain wondering what more I will do in this life. I should be asking myself, “Where do we GROW from here?” (This feels like something Oprah probably said once. If she did, please do not rat me out to her for plagiarizing. If someone else said it, but they are not as cool as Oprah, DO NOT TELL ME WHO IT WAS!)

I love all the things I am doing now and I want to keep doing them as long as anyone will let me, but I also want to do more. I just do. And lately, I have felt that perhaps a lack of structure in my day is holding me back from accomplishing everything I claim I want to accomplish? If what I wanted to accomplish was repeatedly loading the washer and dryer and dishwasher and vacuuming and never even needing to put on shoes if I didn’t want to, I’d be doing great. I am the CEO of never putting on shoes while doing all those things. But, yeah, I want to do more, and I think because I’m not used to working outside of a highly structured environment, it’s become really easy for me to tell myself I just have to get X going, so I can unload then reload Y, then straighten Z and THEN I’ll have a clean slate where I can…answer emails, chase some checks, send some texts and go pick up a prescription that Walgreen’s emailed me every day for a week to let me know was delayed, but now it’s in and they’re calling hourly wondering when I can come get it or they’ll have to send it back, they just cannot be storing my OCD meds for me for all eternity, okay? By the way, all of these things are things that need to be done. Almost everyone on earth has to do these things. I am not uniquely beleaguered by any means. Also, they are all things that my family in no way expects me to be solely in charge of and they are all things my family helps out with, without me even asking them to. I’m actually in so much better shape than SO many people whose families think everything in a house happens by magic and they have no idea that magic’s real name is “Mom.” But since I’m the one that’s there, and these things are also always there, I get entrenched in the immediacy of what I see “needs” to be done. But these are all things that are ongoing and that, if I was working in an office or a studio, I would not be doing, probably hardly ever. Wouldn’t even be thinking about ‘em! Imagine hopping up in the middle of a meeting or a shoot because a buzzer went off and it was time to fold some clothes? It’s silly. So, why am I treating my time working from home like this? Multitasking might be working for other people with more flexible brains, but I don’t even want to eat multigrain bread because, at this point, it looks too disorganized to me. I suspect that I am far from alone.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

So, I bought a planner and I’m telling all of you right now so that I will have some accountability. Furthermore, I guess I’m kind of asking if any of you would be interested in going on a kind of planner-based adventure with me in 2024? What would that even be? I don’t know! We could start off slow, I guess. I am a big fan of starting off slow, if you didn’t know. Fast starters can suck an egg, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not afraid to say that because fast starters are already way up ahead out of earshot. They have no idea I am talking shit about them. Yeah, keep running, you fast-starting egg-suckers!

Anyway, I feel like it would be cute and fun to do a Zoom meeting with anyone who was interested, and we could just do show and tell with the planners we chose for ourselves and talk about what we like and what could be better and how we’re using them. We could have a pretty deep pen and sticker discussion, if anyone was down? Then, if we find that to be enjoyable and not scary or sad, maybe we could meet again for check ups and check ins? We’ll be a bunch of managers managing ourselves, but, like, together? And maybe if we keep it up, we could have fun guests. Maybe Kristen or Ashley or some planner expert I don’t know yet because I am new to this planner world!

For the record, this is the one I got: Caissie’s Planner - we could certainly use the same planner, but I don’t think it matters which one any of us has, and you could probably just use an old notebook you had lying around if you wanted to. That is probably what I should have done, but I just cannot resist the temptation and the promise and, honestly, the threat, of a new, blank journal or journal-adjacent product. I’m a sucker for spanking new stationery!

I’m putting it to the group. What do you think? Should we pencil it into our planners for 2024? See what I did there? I made you want one, didn’t I? Kinda? LMK below.