Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot grid comparison: standard, 120 gsm, Bullet Journal

A few months ago I started using the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal – at first as it was intended, but very quickly it turned into a general weekly and quarterly planner for me. As I neared the halfway mark of the notebook I decided to purchase a replacement, but instead of buying another Bullet Journal I purchased a 120gsm dot grid Leuchtturm A5 notebook. The paper was the same in both notebooks, and as I didn’t use any of the Bullet Journal features and the 120gsm notebooks are slightly cheaper, I thought that it would be a good replacement.

While I was still waiting for my 120gsm notebook to arrive, I happened to find a light grey standard (or 80gsm) dot grid A5 Leuchtturm notebook at a local store at a decent price. I purchased it and decided to compare the three notebooks.

The Bullet Journal is the most expensive of the three, but also comes with the most “stuff”. There’s a booklet that explains how to bullet journal, stickers for bullet journaling, a specially formatted front endpaper, a key for bullet journaling, three ribbon bookmarks instead of two, and several pages with dedicated bullet journal appropriate titles (intentions, index, future log). It has the fewest colour options (just three) and features Bullet Journal branding on the front cover and the spine.

The Leuchtturm 120g notebook has a few more colour options, and is basically a stripped down Bullet Journal edition. In terms of thickness the two notebooks are the same (i.e. very thick notebooks, about twice the thickness of a Moleskine), but the 120g notebook has just two ribbon bookmarks (instead of three), no special endpapers, stickers (beyond the regular ones that come with each Leuchtturm notebook), titled pages, key or booklet. It’s cheaper than the Bullet Journal and has the same paper that the Bullet Journal has.

120gsm on the left, Bullet Journal on the right

Same thickness and form factor:

The regular Leuchttuem dot grid (which I’ll refer to as the standard from now on) is 20% thinner than the other two, features 80gsm paper and not 120gsm and like the 120g has two ribbon bookmarks, label stickers for the notebook, and a pocket on the back. It’s also a bit lighter than the two other notebooks.

Standard on the left, Bullet Journal on the right

Where the standard notebook wins in a knockout is page count. The standard has 251 pages, the 120gsm has 203 pages and the Bullet Journal has 205 pages, but several of those pages feature dedicated Bullet Journal titles (Index, Future Log, etc).

All three notebooks open flat, feature an off white paper, and the last 20 pages are perforated so you can tear them out. The standard and 120gsm contain two lined table of content pages, which the Bullet Journal does not. The Bullet Journal is also the only one to contain special divisions on the paper, which are notated on the front endpaper:

The front endpaper on the standard and the 120gsm look very similar, but the 120gsm has a bit of additional branding:

The stickers on the standard and 120gsm are the same, and are meant to be used on the cover and spine, to label the notebook:

The pockets on all three notebooks look and function pretty much the same.

Back endpapers and pocket in the Standard and 120gsm

The table of contents pages on the standard and 120gsm is useful if you use your notebook for project management or meeting notes, for instance, and want to be able to quickly reference a certain page. The pages are already numbered, so it’s just a matter of building the reference pages in a way that makes sense to you. This doesn’t exist in the Bullet Journal because Leuchtturm is assuming that you’ll be using the official Bullet Journal way of referencing and finding pages.

What Leuchtturm confusingly calls Bookmarks – two index pages in the Standard and 120gsm

Now for the paper. The dot grid is the same on all three, but the paper in the standard is by far the inferior of the three. The page is practically transparent (you can see the Leuchtturm1917 logo on the back pocket on the bottom of the page) and you will have show through with all kinds of inks, pens and nib sizes, and bleed through with most pens and inks (including wider gel ink pens!):

This is a notebook that you either need to use with a very specific kind of pen, or be willing to write on only one side of the page (therefore giving up on the price and page number advantage of the notebook):

Show through and bleed through on the Standard. Even the gel inks faired poorly.

Here’s a close up of the way the ink behaved. This is fountain pen friendly paper in terms of it not spreading or feathering, but the bleed through and show through will limit you to fine and extra fine nibs and less saturated inks:

No feathering, some spread with the Retro 51 refill

The 120gsm paper on both the Bullet Journal and the 120gsm notebook fair much better:

You can definitely use both sides of the page with this notebook, and feel free to toss every kind of nib width and ink at it — I haven’t found one that it can’t handle.

Back of the 120gsm (Bullet Journal was the same)

I’ve been using the Bullet Journal for a while now and I have had no problems using even broad and flexible nibs on it, with wet inks. Inks take time to dry on it, but they don’t bleed through.

Ink test page with example of wet and wide nibs on the Bullet Journal

The paper in all three journals is off white. That may bother you. Here’s the page with a sample of a white page next to it:

Paper colour sample – Leuchtturm vs white paper

At the bottom and the left side of the page you can see the special Bullet Journal divisions, meant to help you create various BuJo formats of things. They’re very unobtrusive, so you can easily ignore them if you don’t need them:

Bullet Journal markings on the bottom and on the left margin

So, basically:

Standard — cheapest one, thinnest and lightest with the most pages. Works only if you use fine gel ink pens or fine and extra-fine nibs with unsaturated or light coloured inks. If you write with a heavy hand, or prefer to use ballpoints this paper will likely note work for you, as you’ll carve your way through several pages without really intending to. If you’re willing and able to work around its limitations, it’s worth getting. It’s also more widely available and comes with a much larger range of cover colours than the other two.

120gsm – when in doubt, get this notebook. It’s got the best paper for the least amount of money of the three. If two ribbon bookmarks aren’t enough for you, it’s likely that you’ll need more than three anyway — get post it tabs. If you don’t have to have the Bullet Journal addons and formatting, save a few bucks and get this notebook. You’ll also have a few more cover colour options.

Bullet Journal — get this if you want to use the Bullet Journal method or you want to try it. If you end up deciding not to use the method, you’re still left with a great notebook, and you can buy the 120gsm next time.

I hope this helps clarify things a bit. Personally I’m currently using the Bullet Journal as a regular notebook (my quarterly planning, weekly planner and long term lists are in it) after failing to find value in the Bullet Journal system, and the standard notebook for work projects. The 120gsm will replace the Bullet Journal once I’ve filled it.

The Cancer Project: Hair Part II

Hair Part I is here.

I started losing my hair after the second chemo treatment.

It was terrifying.

You don’t realize what losing your due to chemo means until you’ve experienced it first hand. It’s not like your hair sheds more, as it does with women postpartum or when men start losing their hair after a certain age.

It falls out in large clumps, without warning. You brush your hand casually against your hair and are left with a thick clump of it in your hand. It was like something out of a cheap horror movie, like some sort of farce. I had no idea my body could do that. Why hadn’t anyone told me that this was how it was going to be?

It also hurt. It was if my scalp suddenly felt the weight of each and every hair, and it couldn’t take it anymore. Imagine the feeling of having weights tied to each hair follicle, constantly tugging your hair down, and you’ll get some kind of idea how it feels.

I lost the most hair during the first shower after my second chemo treatment, and I couldn’t get to the hairdresser fast enough. “Off, I want all of it off!” I commanded him. He gave me a buzzcut that made me look like a punky 16 year old, but I was relieved. My scalp stopped hurting, and I didn’t see hair falling out in clumps anymore. Yes, my hair kept falling out throughout the treatments — normal hair falling out an a strange fuzzy plume growing instead only to fall out too — but I didn’t feel it and I didn’t see the scary clumps. That was good enough for me.

You see it was these clumps that gave me a vivid visual representation of just what my body was going through. You don’t otherwise see the damage the chemotherapy is doing to each and every one of your cells — you just feel it. So when I go that buzzcut I was taking control, pushing the damage away so I could better handle it. Other patients react differently to this message — oftentimes with denial, or by fighting it. They hold on to every wisp of hair, they hope against hope that somehow they won’t be affected.

At the time I thought they were being silly and immature and just causing themselves unnecessary pain. I know better now. This journey is excruciatingly hard and scary for anyone who goes through it. What gets you through, how you react to it, these are personal things that cannot and should not be judged, even by a fellow cancer patient. Some of us need to mourn through our hair. I needed to learn that and accept that. One of the things that helped me do that is the bitter realization that we live in a world where losing your hair isn’t a superficial change.

Weekly Update: A Lot is Going On

My dad went through open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve and repair his aorta. The surgery went well, but the recovery is long and hard. He’s home now bus still severely limited in what he can do, and dealing with the surgery’s side effects. We have about a month more of regular tests, hospital visits, and recovery before he can start building back his strength again.

I’ve had a lot of hospital time lately, which has meant a PTSD flare up. I’m struggling not to fall back to my old coping habits, and I’m journaling a lot to help with that – journaling and running.

I went to see a special “Angels in America” event – part 1 and part 2 in the same day, with a panel with the production’s creatives, and an exhibition about the play in between. It was a fantastic and very moving experience, and the 6 1/2 hours of the play passed in the blink of an eye. I bought three postcards with sketches from the production development and will use them to send postcards to my family.

Next month is my turn at the hospital, as my oncological checkup is coming up. I’ve started lining up the pre-checkup appointments and tests, but I really hope that I get my stress levels from my dad’s procedure down ASAP because they’re about to sky-rocket as the checkup day approaches.

Next month is one week 100 people and I intend to join it again – but this time I won’t be posting to social media. I’ve stopped posting and using social media for the past two months, and it’s been tremendously beneficial for both my productivity and my mental state. If you need encouragement to do the same I suggest watching this video or reading Cal Neport’s Deep Work.

I’m about to restart the cancer project (a series of essays on my journey with cancer), but not through the alphabet superset challenge, nor are my posts going to be deeply technical. I’m going back to personal essays with insights and tips embedded in them. I find them to be more genuine and more genuinely useful, and I didn’t like the arbitrary constraint of the alphabetical posts as a framework for the subject.

Have a great week!

Journaling Series: On Starting a Journal

After finishing my previous journal I just started a new journal, which is both an exciting and daunting prospect whenever it happens. There is so much potential in a new journal – it makes me want to crack it open and fill as many pages as possible in the first sitting. Yet opening that first blank page also makes me freeze in fear of “ruining” a perfectly good notebook with my scrawls.

There are many tips on how to overcome that fear, ranging from deliberately destroying the first few pages to using various formulas to inspire you to fill those first pages. What I currently do is just open a new Stalogy 365 Days notebook, turn it upside down (so the header, which I don’t like, is at the bottom) and slap 2-3 stickers on the back endpages. This time I chose a 10th anniversary fountain pen day sticker and a Goulet Pens dream pen sticker to start off, but I usually add a few more stickers as I use the journal.

I then turned to the first page and started my first journal entry with the following sentence:

“New journal! My third Stalogy 365.”

After that came my usual daily gratitude list, and so I had most of the first page filled up in no time and had no problem moving on after that.

For those still in search for “new journal” inspiration, here are some pointers:

Personalize your new journal in some way. It’s about to hold your innermost thoughts, so you might as well make it your own.
Switch formats mercilessly if you find an old journaling format isn’t working for you – page size, ruling, type, etc.
Have a starting formula for your journal. If you find it difficult to start journaling each day, then pick a formula that you can use each day – like a daily gratitude list, a quote, notes about the weather, your plans for the day.
The first few entries are the hardest, but they’re also only 2-3 days out of the entire life of a journal. It’s worth remembering that and plowing through those days.
When in doubt pick a quote from a book or article you’re reading and start a discussion with the author.
If you’re really at a loss for starting ideas, use the first page, not the last one, as an ink testing page.

Do you have any new journal rituals or tips? Do you enjoy starting a new journal or find it daunting?

Journaling Series: On Finishing a Journal

As I’m writing this I’m two or three pages away from finishing another journal. It’s not the first journal that I’ve finished, but somehow it’s always a tiny, little momentous occasion. After all from the moment we crack open a new notebook and dare to write on its pristine pages we envision this outcome: a notebook chock full of words, sketches and mementos.

Slightly frayed and ink stained but this Stalogy 365Days B6 notebook has served me well for about 6 months

For me the end of a journal offers a change to review and reflect on its contents. The last few pages aren’t used for normal journaling, but rather are reserved for me to write notes in as I leaf through the completed journal’s pages. What key moments does it hold? What revelations? How can I look back with kindness at moments of weakness or failure, and how can I learn and grow from them? This is not always a pleasant or easy experience, but I have always found it worthwhile.

This is also a time when I consider whether I need to switch a journal format or not. I’ve been using the Stalogy Editor’s Series 365Days B6 notebook for the past two journals and I’ve been happy with it, so that’s what I’ll continue using for now.

What about you? Do you have any “end of journal” or “end of notebook” habits and rituals?

Journaling in Hospital

I’ve been spending practically every day for the past week or so with my dad in hospital.
There’s this phenomena that when you most need journaling, the it will help you the most, you find yourself least able to do it.
Hospitals are journaling hostile environments. There are no tables to use, there’s constant noise and distractions, there’s zero privacy and you never know when the staff will pop into the room with something. Whether you yourself are hospitalized or you’re there with someone else, there’s very little opportunity to crack open your journal and start writing.
Hospitals are also where weird, interesting, scary and new things happen, so you generally do what to write about them, to process them on paper. Fo instance, today three policemen escorted a prisoner into the heart surgery department. It wasn’t something I ever expected to see, a sort of non-sequitur that took me a minute or two to process.
The solution is to take temporary notes on your phone, put a reminder for an appointment with your journal in the evening or when things quiet down around you.
If you’re the one hospitalized, try to journal two or three times a day, documenting what’s going on, how you’re feeling, what the staff said, who visited you, etc. The best time to journal is during the nursing staff shift changes, because that’s when nobody will bother you.
Journaling is like running – oftentimes it’s really hard to start, but I haven’t regretted a run or a journaling session yet.

At night you can escape to these empty spaces and write

Quick Update

My dad went through open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve and to repair his aortic aneurysm on Thursday night. The surgery went well, and he spent about 12 hours in the ICU before being transferred to an intermediate department prior to being transferred to the “regular” heart surgery department. He started eating today, and they started to gradually remove the tubes and wires he was connected to. He’s still on oxygen support, he’s still not able to sit independently or walk, and he’s still got a long road to recovery, but we’re getting there.

This week’s blog post was written in advance, and though I approved the comments on it, I haven’t had time to read them. My days are now devoted to hospital runs, hospital bureaucracy (always a delight), and running to maintain my sanity throughout this process. As my PTSD has had a significant flare up with all the extra hospital time, running, reading, journaling and meditation are what’s helped me stay on the path.

I don’t know how next week will unfold. I will resume posting and replying to comments when I can. In the meantime, there’s a pretty good archive of posts here which you are welcome to browse.

How I Use My Notebooks: My Kindle Unread Book List

One of the things that I set up in my Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal is a list of the unread books on my Kindle. It’s supremely easy to buy books on a Kindle, as the whole system is set up a way to make book purchasing as fast and frictionless as possible.

This is a problem for me.

I love books, I adore reading, and I have pretty large group of friends that love reading too. This means that I’m inundated with great recommendations that run the gamut from light hearted fantasy and sci-fi to contemporary and classic literary fiction, with a whole host of fiction and non-fiction books in the middle (I don’t read horror and I don’t read romances and I rarely read poetry but that’s about the only limits I have in terms of my reading tastes). I get several such book recommendations a month, and with my initial impulse to rush out and buy them, and with the ease of purchasing books on a Kindle, things could get out of hand very quickly. This was one of the reasons why for years I was so resistant to buying a Kindle.

You see, it’s very easy to lose track of just how many unread books you have on your device. Even if you sort by unread books, you just don’t get a real feel for how many of them are actually waiting to be read. There’s no bookshelf groaning with the weight of unread books, and I was feeling the lack of that.

Enter my list of unread books on my Kindle:

It’s a simple numbered list of books that I haven’t read and are on my device. As I read a book, I cross it out. As I purchase more books I add them to the end of the list. As I’ve gotten into the habit of downloading samples, I’ve started to write them down too so they don’t get out of hand. It’s super simple, as bare-bones as it can be, and as practical as possible. The point is just to give my brain an idea of the scale of unread books on my device, and it works.

It works.

I’ve stopped compulsively buying books in the fear of “running out of something to read” or “forgetting what I was recommended”. Recommendations go into my GoodReads “Want to Read” list. And my brain can now see that there’s just no chance that I’ll run out of things to read any time soon. If I buy something I have to go over the list and convince myself that what I’m buying deserves precedence over the lovely books waiting patiently in line, some of them for years. I also photograph this list and keep it on my phone for reference, to prevent me from accidentally buying the same book in physical format (unless I purposefully intend to, which is rare).

What about the physical books stacked on shelves, some of them two books deep? I would love to have such a list for them as well, but that task is too daunting for me now. I remember where my books are visually, and moving them all just to catalogue them not only seems like an awful lot of backbreaking work, it will destroy my “memory catalogue of books”. So it seems that my physical books will remain uncatalogued for years to come.

Do you keep a list of all the books you own but haven’t read yet? Do you just keep a list of the books you intend to read next? Do you track your physical books in some way?

Postcards

When my brother and I visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando we bought a pack of postcards and some postage at Hogsmeade and posted some postcards home. They have a little “Owl Post” booth where you can get your postcard stamped with an owl post stamp, and it’s a charming experience. We ended up with a few postcards left over, so we posted them from our Disney hotel. A few weeks after we got home the postcards arrived and made out day.

I was just at a Shalom Sebba exhibition at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art and after my visit I went to the museum store and bought some postcards there. Later that evening I spent some time writing postcards for my family, with little sketches inspired by Sebba’s work:

I had no idea where I would post them, as most of the post boxes in my area have been removed, but I wanted to at least try to post them before my dad’s surgery this week. With today’s postal service sending them would be a bit like tossing a message in a bottle into the sea and hoping it would eventually arrive at its destination. Yet there’s something about not just the wonderful experience of receiving snail mail which I wanted to give to my family, but something particular about postcards that made me want make the effort to post these cards that I could more easily hand deliver myself.

More than letter postcards evoke some things to me – a break from routine, a holiday, exotic places, better days. There’s something creative about the selection you make, and they make me want to sketch in them, write in their margins, be creative in the tiny space I’m given to work with. The limited space, zero privacy and the need to withstand the elements at least somewhat makes them a creative challenge we rarely encounter in days where everyone is an instant message away.

Yet that’s what made them appeal to me, because more than anything postcards speak of hope, and these days I need all the hope I can get.

January 2024 in Pens and Paper

January was a big month in terms of writing pens dry. For the first time ever I managed to write all of the Inkvent pens dry by the end of the month. That’s 12 fountain pens written dry, which is the most I’ve ever written dry in a month. The secret is not filling them more than 50% full, and making sure to journal and note-take consistently.

In terms of paper products I’ve journaled in my Stalogy 365 B5 journal and will be switching to a new journal next month (also a Stalogy 365 B5 because I like the paper and the format). I do have a little quirk with these notebooks – I use them upside down because I don’t like the header with the dates on it, so I flip the notebook around so that it’s at the bottom of the page. That way it doesn’t bother me as much.

I’ve also been using a Rhodia A5 dot pad to time block my day, and Kokuyo A4 KB which I cut in half (to get two A5 pieces of paper) and write my daily todo list on. At work I use a Maruman Mnemosyne horizontal A5 notebook (either squared or blank) to brainstorm on, track my tasks, take meeting notes, etc. My weekly plans and long term 12 week year goals are in a Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal that stays at home, on my desk. The rest (Stalogy B5 journal, two pieces of daily planning paper, and the Mnemosyne) travel with me when I go to the office.

I have a monthly calendar with some monthly reading, running, gym, swimming and blogging targets on it and I draw that on a Well Appointed Desk “Rebel Plans” notepad.

Earlier this month I used the wonderful Pelikan Hubs paper to do my daily planning, and it was amazing (cardstock thick and fountain pen friendly). I was running out of it quickly though, which is why I moved to the Kokuyo.

In terms of standard pens I’ve used the Pilot Hi-Tech-C in 0.4, my Spoke Design Spoke Pen in orange crush, and a Pilot Juice Up 04 in orange and light blue. As I will be spending a lot of time at hospitals next month, I will likely be using more standard pens then.

Pencils in use were the Tennessee Red, which is gorgeous and a treat to use, and Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr.2 mechanical pencil in red and grey. I have better mechanical pencils that this one, and yet I keep returning to it. Something about the Drehgriffel design is simply appealing to me. You can read my review of it here.

Next month will likely see more use of standard pens and pocket or cheap fountain pens. I will be in the hospital a lot, so that means that my setup will change to reflect that.

Here are the fountain pens I filled for February:

The new and challenging setting will mean that I’ll likely go back to my trusty Moleskine hardcover and Ti Arto for the duration of my dad’s stay in hospital.

What stationery products have you been using in January?

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Month: February 2024