The New Year For Diaries And Planners - R2BC

Last year's Diary is still in use until Sept 1st.
I don't know why I still have the year before -
it's being chucked out now.
The new one tempts me. I can look and even caress...
but not write in it. 

Here are my Reasons 2B Cheerful for this week. It was hard to think of anything specific as I've already posted about DD's school prize and the Sound and Light Show on Jerusalem. There is a general cheeriness around here due to the relaxed summer, reduced schedule, and no stress time of year. So here are a few little things. 

1
New Diary Time
I've bought mine. I just have to be patient through the summer until D-day on September 1st.

I was going to write a whole explanation but I've covered this subject before. Bottom line is that everyone only gets one New Year for Diaries, and ours is in the summer. Here's what I wrote about it a few years ago. Nothing has changed.

I followed my own links and found this other post I wrote about the year I created my own bullet journal. I'm a little bit tempted but it's just too much work and the bought diaries work just as well. Especially as they are 15 month diaries. So even though they start on September 1st, they go through till the end of the following December. This leaves loads of superfluous pages on which to paste in collections, lists, and plans.

As we're already on the subject. Here is my love letter to Filofax. It was unrequited.

2
Clear Table
You may have noticed the clear table background on the photo of the diary. This is the first time our dining table has been cleared since stuff started coming home from our combined schools and it becoming our dumping surface. I'm finally getting organized again!

3
A Light Supper
My nephew was in Israel for a short trip and came for supper one evening. I was prepared with a pile of lightbulbs for him to change and we are now bathed in light after sunset once more. Of course I can change a lightbulb myself but I don't like climbing.

This was actually a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to check that the lightbulbs were working properly before mentioning it. 😜

After the light fixture renovations and a light supper (pun intended), we sat down for a card game - a match actually. Kalooky up to 150 points and you can come in once. We were just wrapping up the game and my nephew was getting ready to leave, when he got a phone call. His friends were leaving their hostel and going into town. He went off to start his evening and we went to bed.

Have a great week. The Reasons 2B Cheerful linky is back with Becky on Lakes Single Mum.

Beyond Filofax (And A Warning For Israelis)

First some background. Choosing and buying a new diary for the year is a spiritual event for me. Around this time of year I start looking out for the new crop in the shops. The Jewish New Year is in September - not the 1st of September but sometime in that month according to the lunar calendar. So conveniently everything starts after the long summer break. Nice and neat. And my birthday is in September so, as a teacher, it's triple neat for me.

Last year I missed it. I was so busy getting DD ready for school and every time I went shopping she was with me so I couldn't browse in comfort. I ended up going to the mall on September 1st when she was back at school and the remaining selection was pitiful. In desperation I bought a week to a double page pocket diary but I never liked the landscape (sideways) layout. I like a book to read like a book. So a month later I bought another week to a double page pocket diary with portrait (upright) layout and its been ok. I mourned the velvety softback diaries in dusky lilac that I'd missed. A few weeks later this particular shop (Chanan in the Hadar Mall) gathered all the leftover diaries from a number of branches and my dream diary was back. But I couldn't bring myself to buy a third diary.

We went to London in December and I dragged DD round the shops looking at Filofaxes and other diaries for 2016. Luckily I saved myself the up to 80 pounds for the most all encompassing, beautifully finished, practically live-in Filofax when I realized that the weekly spread that I like starts on Monday in the UK whereas our weekends are Friday-Saturday and we go back to work on Sunday. The lack of Jewish holidays and National holidays was a minor irritation that I could have overcome easily but starting the new week at the end of each old week was not on. All that browsing for nothing. And you know how much I loved Filofax.

So with all that disappointment last year, I was so excited to see that the new September 2016 - September 2017 diaries are in the local shops already, and we're only halfway through June! This morning I made my pilgrimage to Chanan and with the full array of new diaries before me - I was disappointed.

Warning to all Israelis: Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) is late this year, falling on October 2nd. So some of the diaries don't start until October 1st. Others start on September 7th or 11th. WTF? How does that help when all the kids go back to school on September 1st and all activities and arrangements have to be made from that date?

There was a page a day diary where you write your own days and dates. The guy in the shop proudly showed me it and explained how it works. I might look stupid but wasn't too stupid to notice that the full year calendar on the front page was 2014 with two half pages for 2015 and 2016. The shop guy didn't think that was important. Idiot.

There are four options for week to a double page spread with upright layout (although not all of them starting on September 1st):
1. With a complete year chart.
2. With a page for each month with the days in a list.
3. With a month chart set out like a desk calendar with a square for each day.
4. With none of the above.
Is it too much to ask to have all of the above in one diary? Don't they know that people don't just have appointments anymore. We have goals and intentions, we have exercise schedules (well I don't) and food diaries, menu plans, scheduled blog posts, random ideas, lists.... They so don't have a clue.

Yes I know there's nothing in it

The only one that had everything was Filofax of course. But I realized that I've gone beyond Filofax. I don't need a zipped pocket, a place for credit cards, an address book, or those bulky ring binder centers. Sorry Filofax, it's not you it's me.

So I bit the bullet as it were. I bought a plain paper book to make my own bullet journal. For the uninitiated, a bullet journal is a personal diary that you create yourself, with space for all your aims, goals, and lists. Yes I know - far more opportunity to fail but that's half the fun in life, isn't it? For me the perfect diary is going to have a full year chart. Each month on one page with the days listed for planning the year. Before each new month there'll be a month chart and an empty page for shopping lists, menu plans, contact numbers, etc...

There was a dusky lilac softback book but it was a bit too big to fit in my bag and it didn't have enough pages. So I went with the turquoise. I can hardly wait to get my felt tip pens, ruler and pencils out and make a start.