Notebooks

The Cancer Notebook

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My most important notebook is this Rhodia pad:

In the middle of 2018 my mother was hospitalized and then diagnosed with a very serious, advanced, life threatening condition. Six months of constant battle, second, third and fourth opinions, and a lot of reading of medical papers later I managed to pull her out of the “you’re fat and that’s why you’re sick” sinkhole and to get the doctors’ full attention. She was re-diagnosed, this time with two, possibly three, types of cancer. In the end of 2018 my mother was taken off the transplant list and rushed into biological cancer treatment. She had an extremely rare condition, and her doctors didn’t know if the treatment would help. It ended up saving her life, but this is not what this post is about.

This post is about stationery. It contains no pretty templates, no flashy colours, no glitter pens. It’s just a few insights into small, pragmatic little things that I wish someone had told me when my life fell unexpectedly to pieces and I took on a new, additional, full time job: a seriously ill family member’s advocate.

September is childhood cancer awareness month(please donate to St. Jude here). Cancer is not something you plan for but statistically speaking its something that the large majority of us will have to deal with at some point or another. It’s also far from the only serious disease or condition a family member can fall ill to. Here are a few things that I wish I knew going in, stationery related things that would have saved me a lot of time and worry:

  • Get a large folder, larger than you think you’ll need. Find a permanent place for it in your house. If you don’t have a printer, get a printer. This is a must. Print out every test result, doctor’s summary letter, referral, application form, etc related to the disease. You need these in hardcopy (oftentimes more than one copy), as you’ll be bringing them into doctor consultations with you. These things may be digital now, but that’s not good enough. If you go get a second opinion, the doctor may not have access to the computing systems of your previous doctor. You may want to change health providers along the way, and you need to make sure that your new doctor has all the required information at hand. Put CDs with CT, MRI, US, and PET-CT results in that same folder. Make sure that you get a copy on CD of any imaging test you take.
  • Get a simple but good quality writing pad, and a ballpoint or gel ink pen to go with it. I use a staple bound Rhodia 16 pad, with a clip to keep it shut. It needs to be clearly marked as your “doctor notes” notebook. It needs to have a permanent place in your house, just like the folder. Why? Because you never know when you might have to rush to the hospital, and the last thing you need is to waste time searching for your folder and notebook lifeline. Because this notebook will become your lifeline.
  • The ruling on the notebook doesn’t matter, but I really recommend using a top bound notebook, and keeping it very simple and professional looking. You’re going to have enough of an uphill battle, let this notebook be a helpful tool, and not a distraction. I also recommend forgoing pocket style notebooks, or A4 sized notebooks. An A5 size (or equivalent) is best. Why? Because you’ll be using this in doctors’ offices and in hospital waiting rooms, not just while researching things in the comfort of your home. More often than not you’ll be balancing the notebook on your knees, sometimes while standing. You also want to have enough room to write, without being encumbered by a too large notebook. A5 means that you’ll likely devote a page for each doctor’s visit, so all the relevant information will be in front of you when you reference it later.
  • Use a ballpoint or a gel ink pen, don’t use a fountain pen. This is not the time nor place for that. I used the Ti Arto for most of my notes. Why? Because I easily wipe it clean with alcohol wipes after each visit to the hospital, because it’s dependable and not flashy, and because it doesn’t have a click mechanism, so I can’t fidget with it.
  • Take the notebook with you to every doctor’s visit, every exam, every consultation, every hospitalization. Take notes of EVERYTHING. What the doctor says, even to themselves or a colleague (write stuff down phonetically and ask for clarification about it later), what books they had on their shelves, how many kids they have and what their name is (part of your job as advocate is to remind the overworked doctor in front of you that your family member is a person. A good way to do that is to treat the doctor as one too.), what is the name of the secretaries, tips that you get from other patients (be extra nice in waiting rooms: there’s a mine of information around you), information about aid and support programs, names of other doctors, nurses that the best at taking blood tests, physical therapists that are extra patient and positive, etc. There will be times where doctors tell you that you don’t have to write everything down, they’ll write it in the summary letter for you. Smile kindly at them and continue to write. They’ll never write down everything that you will, trust me on this.
  • Refer back to this notebook when you’re at home. Use it to help with any research you’re doing (patient rights, finding support groups, finding other doctors to consult with, etc), to help you keep track of what was said when at which doctor’s office, and to generally keep you grounded. Also, if you didn’t have time to write everything down when you were in the doctor’s office, write down what you missed as soon as you get home.
  • Use it to vent. The back pages of my notebook are full of curses. That may or may not work for you, but it certainly helped me not lose my mind during the darkest hours of my mother’s ordeal.
  • Don’t forget digital tools. You’re going to need a spreadsheet to track the family member’s weight and crucial, disease indicating test results. Which results are important to track? It depends on the disease, and that’s what your notebook is for. As soon as possible get that information from the doctor, and write it down. Don’t trust them to do the day to day tracking for you – they have hundreds, sometimes thousands of other patients. Track whatever is crucial yourself, and raise flags with your doctor when things change.
  • Don’t forget to share the information in your notebook with others (if your family member approves, of course).
The Cancer Notebook

A Pen Hack, a Field Notes and the Hi-Tech C

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I had an issue with my Ti2 Techliner where my favourite gel ink refill (the Uni-ball UMR-85) and basically all gel ink refills dried out and stopped writing a few words after I uncapped the pen. While ballpoint refills like the Jetstream faired better, they also would “fade out” after a few lines, and then, after some coaxing, return to normal. It couldn’t be that the refill was drying out, as after capping the pen, it wrote well enough again for a few words. It was a refill problem, as the same refill wrote perfectly fine in a different pen.

I tried searching for answers and asked around in the Pen Addict slack but got no answers. It was frustrating, since I liked the pen, but couldn’t use it because it wouldn’t work with my preferred refills. I had a feeling that the magnet at the tip of the pen was what was causing the ink flow issue, but it only yesterday did I figure out how to bypass the very thing that was holding the pen together.

What I did was change the order of the parts in the front section of the pen. The original order was refill, plastic spacer, red o-ring, magnet and then the section screwed over that. What I did was reverse the o-ring and the magnet so now it’s: refill, plastic spacer, magnet, red o-ring, and then the section. The result is kind of pleasing to the eye, and more importantly it fixed the flow problem completely, and now I can actually use this fetching pen.

You can see the red o-ring around the tip of the pen.

I tend not to review Field Notes because they arrive so late to me (due to postal issues, not Field Notes issues) that it seems irrelevant to review last quarter’s edition when everyone already has the new one at hand. Covid-19 has made the postal problems even worse, and so only now, and after contacting the wonderful Field Notes people and getting a reshipment, have my Vignette notebooks arrived.

What also arrived were my Field Notes Rooster 2020 notebooks, which are part of Field Notes’ yearly sponsorship of the Morning News and the Tournament of Books. I read all of the books in the Tournament of Books shortlist this year, for the second year in a row. I didn’t post reviews of them all in this site as I didn’t enjoy the last 3-4 books, and I didn’t feel like posting negative review after negative review.

I did, however, love this year’s Field Notes Rooster special edition notebook, and it is by far my favourite Rooster special edition notebook that Field Notes ever issued. It is a squared notebook, and not lined, for the first time ever, and the bold red and black print on the cover is much more striking than their usual craft or cream choices for this series.

Bold, bright colours on the cover.

The fact that these notebooks (sold as singles, with the proceeds going to literacy related charities) arrived so late means that I have a had a few months to think about the Tournament of Books 2020 reading list.

Squared notebook.

I enjoyed the 2019 reading list more, but the 2020 list was overall a good, interesting list of contemporary writing that I for the most part would not have read otherwise. There were a few mediocre books on it, and a few that I really disliked, but as a whole it wasn’t a bad list. I may try reading next year’s list too.

The list. There are 18 books on the list, 4 books that I though weren’t worth reading, of them two were a silly, bloated waste of time and two were infuriatingly bad. There were 7 books that I thought were real gems.

I wrote a few weeks back that I was struggling with my notebook setup, and things have changed since then. I’ve settled on using a blank large Moleskine hardcover in Reef Blue and a Pilot Hi-Tech C 0.4 for a running list of work projects and related notes.

I’ve customized the cover with a Star Wars decal to make it pop and let me easily identify it.

I use the right hand side for a running tasks per project (I still manage major project points in the Things app), and the left hand side for related points, reminders and ideas. Each project has at least one spread, and I drop in pages with ideas and things to remember in between the project pages.

The Pilot Hi-Tec-C (also known as the G-Tec-C4) is not a pen that I would recommend because it’s so very delicate and unreliable, but I used to be a fan years ago, and in a burst of nostalgia (and against my better judgement) I’ve gone back to using these pens. There’s something about the barrel design of this pen, combined with it’s needle tip that makes me enjoy writing with it. Again, I wouldn’t recommend it, as you’ll rarely see a refill through (the tip will bend, or it will become to scratchy to use, or it will dry out and become unusable) and in general the Uni-ball Signo DX are much better 0.4 tipped gel ink pens. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and this is what I prefer for daily work use right now.

A Pen Hack, a Field Notes and the Hi-Tech C

Some Thoughts on Productivity Systems

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In the beginning of the month I started working in a new team, in a new career path, in a new technical job, under new circumstances. After working for two and a half months from home, I now work half a week at home and half a week at work, in a pretty empty office. I haven’t met all my team members, as we work in separate “capsules,” ensuring that if one of us got sick at least 50% of us would remain unaffected and capable of working. After 17 years of being a Mainframe system programmer, I’m now a DevOps engineer. I’ve been training for the past six months for it, and I love the work, but it’s still not the easiest switch to make. I have a new set of managers, with a new management style, and my old job keeps calling on me, which results in some wild context switching.

And meanwhile the world is burning, as incredible stupid leaders worldwide decide that their pockets are worth more than other people’s lives.

I’m not a huge fan of change, and so my productivity systems tend to stay around with me for years. During the early days of the pandemic, when I just started working from home, I thought that this was temporary. On the second week I realized that the mess of notes in whatever writing pad was around would need to change. And my mindset would need to change.

I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

I tried to replicate my old work setup at first (a large Moleskine squared hardcover with only the daily todo part of bullet journalling), keeping my home setup intact (a Field Notes with a running todo, lists, trackers etc). That held until I realized that I was starting a new job in a place that moved at a completely different pace than what I was used to. I was also no longer a manager, so the focus of my work was different. I needed to tear everything down and start over again.

I went back to digital task management. I’d tried OmniFocus for a while two years ago and didn’t like its complexity. I had used Things for a good long while before that but stopped and change back to a paper notebook once I decided that I had to have a physical barrier between work and home to have any balance in my life. Those were wild times, and I’m glad that I made that choice, but now it was time to bring Things back into my life. I’ve been using it since the 1st of June, and while it isn’t yet 100% set up to perfection, it’s working well so far.

I’m now managing both work and home from Things, because I can’t handle the added hassle of remembering to lug which notebook where every day, especially now, when I’m not yet set up in my new place. I also don’t realistically think that I could have kept track of my work in a paper notebook right now. I’ve “outgrown” it.

The issue is that I still love paper notebooks, and I still love writing with pen and pencil on a piece of paper. I still keep a pad next to me when I work and scribble ideas on it, but this switch has dwindled down my daily stationery use significantly.

As I was clearing my old desk I found physical evidence of all my years of work there: notebooks full of todos, meeting notes, project notes, ideas and problem solving pointers. I could see the work that I’ve put in. My new system is searchable, but it’s still an amorphous pile of bits somewhere in the Cloud.

I don’t recommend this eraser. It’s just one that makes me smile.

When I went into quarantine I had an inexplicable yearning to get back to the first ever real productivity system I used, the PigPogPDA. I loved my Moleskine pocket plain reporter notebooks, set up just right, full of all the important information that I might ever need. I had shopping lists, trackers, drawings, story ideas, directions, packing lists, cheat sheets in those notebooks: they were my everything at the time. I also remember how terribly expensive they were for me, and how difficult to obtain. Every page was precious, and I had to be careful not to waste any. I used the Hi-Tec-C and the Staedler Mars technico lead holder for that, and these little notebooks lasted for ages and travelled the world with me. Only in the past three years have I stopped using them, replacing them with a much simpler system in Field Notes pocket notebooks. Out of nostalgia I brought one back to life. It has done a lot to cheer me up and give me a sense of stability during these hectic times. Yes, I know it’s just a notebook. Sometimes “just a notebook” is all it takes.

If I have any advice to offer it’s this: be kind to yourself and pick whichever system works for you, and doesn’t make you work for it. Pick something that you’ll enjoy using. If it’s a sleek app, let it be a sleek app. You’ll find use for the notebooks in your cupboard eventually. If it’s notebooks, then make them entirely your own. That’s the joy of using paper planning anyway. And don’t be shy of saying: “This doesn’t work for me anymore”.

So I’m back to digital planning, and I’m going to find a way to have fun with my pens and paper somehow (I still journal and draw and write after all). This is something that’s likely to change as the times do, my work and my life circumstances do. So long as I don’t fall into the trap of Productivity Pr0n and forget what all this is in service of, I’m fine.

I’m fine.

Some Thoughts on Productivity Systems

Field Notes In and Out: National Parks

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Out: Field Notes National Parks Mount Rainier (the last of series B that I’ve been using).

In: Field Notes National Parks Grand Teton (the first of series D to be put to use).

National Parks is my favourite Field Notes edition since Two Rivers. I’ve bought additional packs of series B and series C, beyond what I received with my subscription. I highly recommend splurging on a pack or two of these pocket notebooks.

Field Notes In and Out: National Parks

Moleskine Limited Edition Sakura

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In early 2019 I found out that Moleskine had come out with a Sakura Limited Edition that they were selling originally only in Japan. This is not the dark pink/light pink limited edition Sakura that is available as part of their 2020 spring catalog, but a smaller run of notebooks that came out before that. The edition garnered enough interest that it started appearing outside of Japan in Moleskine stores near the end of 2019. After searching for this notebook online with no success, I was surprised to find it in a Moleskine store on Oxford street, London. I try not to buy notebooks abroad, because they can very quickly weigh down your luggage, but I couldn’t pass these by. There were two versions of Limited Edition Sakura in large format, and two pocket ones. I showed some restraint and “only” bought the large ones.

I just finished one journalling notebook and I was casting for the next one to use, when I decided to go for this Sakura one. It was difficult to acquire and expensive, so there was a risk that it would stay in its wrapper forever, but I decided that if anything would cheer me up as I journal through these difficult times it’s this notebook.

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Front cover with wrapper. Notice how the wrapper design matches the fabric print.

The Moleskine Sakura is a cloth covered notebook, with an utterly unique design. There’s an imprint of cherry blossoms over the slightly shimmering pink fabric, and the imprint looks like it’s floating over the fabric cover. The result is a stunning and tactile notebook that looks extremely luxurious. It’s almost too pretty to use.

Back cover. 

The fabric is clearly synthetic, and it has some shimmer to it because of that. The imprint on top has part of the fabric’s texture, and I’d venture to say that it was screen printed, but I’m not a screen printing expert so I could very well be wrong. It’s hard to capture how the covers look in person, but it’s as if there’s an invisible layer between the floral print and the fabric cover. The flowers appear to be floating in the air.

The print. Nobody does fabric covered notebooks as well as Moleskine does.

Inside the covers the endpapers feature the same print but in monochrome pink and white.

Here are the back endpapers, and Moleskine again gets full points for prints matching perfectly on the back pocket and the back cover.

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The back pocket edges are in purple fabric, much like the elastic closure and the bookmark.

The bookmark features a slightly lighter purple than the elastic closure and back pocket.

Like most limited edition Moleskines the Sakura comes with a sticker sheet. This one is of cherry blossoms in white and various shades of pink. It’s a beautiful sheet of stickers, and the washi-like design of the bottom half of the sheet is a very nice touch.

Like all the Moleskines in recent years the paper wrapper features a “side-B” that you can reuse. This one is meant to be a bookmark, and design on it was so fetching, I actually cut it out and faced it with card-stock to make a bookmark that I’m now using.

My completed bookmark:

The Moleskine Sakura is one of the most stunning designs Moleskine has produced in recent years. I’m glad that they’re making a version of this design more widely available, and I really hope to see them utilizing this printing technique for other designs in the future.

Moleskine Limited Edition Sakura

Field Notes In and Out: National Parks

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I just finished my first Field Notes of the year. In: Mr. Rainier National Park (Field Notes National Parks), Out: Field Notes Joshua Tree National Park (Field Notes National Parks).

This has become one of my favourite Field Notes editions, right up there with Two Rivers and Balsam Fir. It also wears surprisingly well. This notebook has been bashing around in my bag for the past three months and you can barely tell:

The dent on the side is from where I clip it shut.

The Mt. Rainier is the last of the National Parks C pack (which also included the Grand Canyon) and the cover just brings a smile on my face. What a great edition.

Field Notes In and Out: National Parks

Moleskine Spring-Summer 2020 Catalog

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Moleskine’s Spring-Summer 2020 catalog is finally available online, and as usual, it’s chock full of new products and updates to existing ones. I recommend that you go spelunking in this massive tome (173 pages!), as you’re bound to find something in it that speaks to you. I’m going to try to cover most of the main changes, but this post is far from a comprehensive review of all that Moleskine Spring-Summer catalog has to offer.

Screenshot 2020-01-05 21.23.43

Classic Notebooks Expanded are getting two new colours (their first): Scarlet Red and Sapphire Blue. I’m assuming that this means that they have been a success, although judging by the choice to keep the squared and dotted rulings only in black, some options have likely been more successful than others.

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Classic Notebooks Hardcover get two new seasonal colours (Hydrangea Blue and Lemon Green), as has been Moleskine’s custom in recent years. I’m guessing that Hydrangea Blue is going to be as big a hit as Reef Blue was, but I’m still disappointed to see them limit the new colours to their most popular rulings only: ruled and plain. In other news, the Classic XXL has been discontinued, which isn’t really surprising as the A4 size has largely gone on to replace it. The strange thing is that in the Classic Notebooks Softcover lineup the opposite has happened: the XXL is staying on and the A4 is no longer available. Why? Looking over the rest of the catalog there appears to be a major and bewilderingly inconsistent reshuffling going on in the larger sized Moleskines. Some lines kept the XXL, some kept the A4 (the XXL is smaller than the A4), and I’m guessing that the only thing guiding Moleskine’s decision is which size gets purchased more per each line. In any case, if you’re a fan of the larger notebooks I recommend looking over the catalog to make sure that your favourite notebook isn’t getting discontinued. It takes a while for stores to run out of stock, so if you love the Classic XXL for instance, you still have time to stockpile a few while they’re still out there.

On that note I’m still disappointed that the squared reporter notebooks haven’t returned. I was in Porto, Portugal last year and I found a shop that not only had large squared reporter notebooks, but also the Moleskine Van Gogh notebooks that started their whole limited edition lineup, so I filled half my suitcase with those.

Screenshot 2020-01-05 21.24.45

Moleskine is fully embracing its phenomenally good fabric cover skills with the addition of the Blend collection as part of its regular lineup. There are two notebooks on offer, both in new colours (Harringbone Purple and Harringbone Blue), in ruled and dotted (!) options. The Blend covers are some of the best that Moleskine has produced in recent years, but they photograph pretty poorly. These are notebooks to see (and feel) in person, and I have no idea what the colour of the Harringbone Purple really is. Even if you’re not a Moleskine fan I recommend getting one of their fabric covered notebooks (the Two-Go notebooks for instance are also fountain pen friendly and have a cool blank on one side lined on the other side setup), just to see how good fabric covered notebooks can be when done properly.

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Planners are a giant chunk of the catalog, but I’m not going to go over them because that’s where madness lies. I’ll just point out that the 2021 limited edition planners are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peanuts, Little Prince (which were all featured in previous years), and the brand new Maneki-Neko. This is the first glimpse in the catalog of the growing Japanese influences on the Moleksine lineup this year (and over the last year or two), a theme that will repeat itself in the limited edition notebook lineup. Also, this is the first year in a while that hasn’t featured Star Wars planners, although the fall catalog may yet rectify that.

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This brings us to the most interesting part of the catalog for me, the limited edition notebooks. Here is where Moleksine flexes its design prowess, and the results are always unique, and oftentimes stunning. This year they’ve completed their Harry Potter limited edition lineup, with each HP book getting its own notebook design. You’d be shocked to know that these were super popular and so last year’s four notebooks are hard to find at reasonable prices. I expect this year’s three to sell just as quickly.

Screenshot 2020-01-05 21.30.45

That leaves four other limited editions for this year, with only one not having direct Japanese ties:

The Wizard of Oz – These are four large notebooks, two ruled (the green and the red), two plain (the blue and the yellow). They each come with a set of themed stickers, and I love their design. These four and the Sakura are a must buy for me, if I can get my hands on them (thank you, Book Depository, for messing up my Harry Potter pre-order. You’re the best). They feature original artwork from W.W. Denslow and the title of a chapter on the cover, and it looks like they are fabric covered, which is excellent news.

Sakura – this is the second time that Moleskine has come out with Sakura themed notebooks, and the previous round was stunning. I think that this edition is a little plainer, but again, fabric covered notebook in still a lovely design, so I’m probably going to get these, at least in the large size. These come in large and pocket, both ruled and plain, and they include a set of themed stickers.

The Legend of Zelda – in the video game/geeky part of the limited edition notebooks, it’s Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda that gets the Moleskine treatment this time. Again, themed stickers included, but no fabric cover. There is embossing on the cover, and nostalgic, pixalated graphics throughout. This edition also features a numbered (4,999 copies) box, and two large, ruled notebooks. This would have been a great edition for a squared ruling, but Moleskine will be Moleskine, I guess.

One Piece – a manga themed edition of two large notebooks, both ruled, with designs that are really difficult to see properly in the catalog. It comes with a set of themed stickers, and they appear to have gone for wildly different designs with these two notebooks. One appears to have a bold rendering of the Jolly Roger flag, and another is very subtly embossed on a peach cover.

Maneki-Neko – there’s just one notebook here, maybe because the cat of good fortune got its own planner lineup. This appears to be the least imaginative edition of the lot, in the least imaginative ruling (ruled, of course, what else?). There are stickers included here too.

And there’s a fifth limited edition that Moleskine claims is a spring launch, but as I purchased it from a Moleskine store in September, I beg to differ. It is gorgeous though, so I’ll give it a mention anyway:

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I am New York – the city themed limited edition notebooks that Moleskine has been issuing in recent years (and at first were only available in Moleskine stores) are some of their best designed notebooks, and that’s saying something. The graphics on the outer cover, the central park scene on the back endpaper and the new your breakfast on the front endpaper are just perfect. I plan on writing a review of this edition later this year, but I can already say that it’s one of my all time favourites (did I mention that it has a fabric cover?).

Now on to the Pro selection of the catalog:

A4 Pro Notebooks are discontinued, but the new Pro Project Planners range comes with Large, X-Large and A4 size and not the XXL. Again, not sure what the thinking is here. As for the Pro Project Planners themselves, these aren’t planners in the traditional sense of the word, but rather planners that have various productivity bits stuck in (there’s brainstorming, project tracking, structured note taking and to do list sections, as well as labeling stickers, goal pages and more). These are clearly business oriented, which explains Moleskine’s choice to produce them only with black covers.

Others:

The City Notebooks Pocket Box is no longer available. I imagine that it wasn’t popular enough for them to keep stocking it.

There are a few additions to the Smart Writing System notebooks. I don’t plan on buying into the system, so I’m not going to cover it here.

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Discontinued Go Click Ballpens

The Classic Cap Roller Pens and Classic Click Ballpen in white, tide green, and charcoal grey are being discontinued. The Go Click Ballpen in Pattern Cyan, Magenta Green and Yellow are also being discontinued. These are among the best looking Moleskine Go pens, so that’s a real shame. What’s worse is that Moleskine is discontinuing all of its roller gel (and ballpoint) refills. Their gel refill is Parker size and pretty great, so I really wish they would continue producing it. As it is I’m planning to buy one or two to keep around while I still can (they aren’t cheap).

I personally am a bit disappointed in Moleksine’s Spring-Summer lineup this year compared to their previous Fall-Winter one, but that’s just a matter of taste. There are some real lookers here, and the choice of seasonal colours for their notebook lineup (Hydrangea Blue and Lemon Green) is great. There are a lot of options that are getting discontinued, hopefully to be replaced by others in the future, so it’s worth taking some time to make sure that your favourite combo hasn’t been axed. Old stock of discontinued items will stick around for a while, but if there’s something that you really can’t do without and it’s marked as “no longer available” or “while stocks last” then it’s worth stocking up on it while you still can.

 

 

Moleskine Spring-Summer 2020 Catalog

Bradley Theodore Limited Edition Moleskine Review

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This is an unusual Moleskine limited edition notebook, and I wasn’t planning on reviewing it, but I just finished my Moleskine Moria journal and my hand just reached for this one as my next Moleskine, so here we are.

The Bradley Theodore limited edition Moleskine came out in 2017 as part of Moleskine’s lineup for the Milan Design Week. As far as I can tell the notebooks where designed primarily as a giveaway for the Moleskine’s and Bradley Theodore’s bag collection, and for some reason the three notebook designs somehow landed in the Moleskine UK physical stores. That’s where I found this fellow, languishing on a high shelf in the Moleskine Covent Garden shop, nestled above the Bradley designed bags. The design was bold enough to make me interested.

Will you look at that?

This notebook is just that front cover, and in this case it’s enough. If I remember correctly it was priced like a regular edition Moleskine, and considering the amount of work that went into the design, I think that it’s a fair price. I don’t like reviewing products that are out of stock, but you may be able to find one on eBay or Amazon marketplace, and there’s a point to this review, trust me.

The ribbon, elastic band and the back pocket hinges are a shade of pink that matches the graffiti design on the cover:

Bradley Theodore’s signature is on the left side of the front endpaper:

And that’s it. The back cover is plain black, there are no stickers/add-ons/cute side-B of the paper band, and there is no real design on the front or back endpapers. It’s probably the cheapest limited edition that Moleskine could make, which brings me to my point:

This notebook is an outlier. It actually surprised me when I opened it up, how little there was here. That made me appreciate even more just how much design work goes into a “regular” Moleskine limited edition notebook.

I’m “moving into” this notebook tomorrow, but it already has one entry that I slipped in from October, and a cool promotional postcard that I stuck inside, plus my “In case of loss” all filled in. If you’re looking for tips on how to start a new journal, I recommend reading the end of this post.

Bradley Theodore Limited Edition Moleskine Review

Two Years of Daily Journaling

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This week I celebrated two years of daily journaling. While I’ve been keeping journals for years, until the last two years I’ve only done so sporadically. Journaling was something that I did only when things got really rough, to keep myself going, or when I was travelling, to preserve the memories of my trip. I used pocket notebooks for my sporadic journals, as it was more important for me to capture things than to reflect on them. It was a utilitarian process, not an enjoyable one. I knew that once I decided to really start a journaling habit, that would have to change.

These are all the journals which I’ve used during the past two years.

So the first thing I did was pick a notebook that I knew I’d want to use, and use daily. The only rules were that it had to make me happy, and that it had to be large enough for me to be able to actually write in it, not just jot things down. I wasn’t looking for the best notebook with the best paper in the best format (I don’t think that exists, actually, but for us stationery geeks the search is always on), just a good enough notebook for me.

My notebooks of choice.

I also decided very early on that I couldn’t use a fountain pen for this, because I wanted a pen that I could write with even not under the most ideal circumstances. I was also planning for both the notebook and the pen to bash around freely in my bag. These were going to be used and look used.

Can you see how bloated these notebooks are? Moleskine makes them sturdy enough to take a beating. 

I chose Moleskine large ruled hardcover notebooks as my notebook of choice, and the uni-ball Signo RT 0.5 gel ink pen as my pen/refill (UMR-85N) of choice. I wanted a sturdy lined notebook that I’d enjoy using and looking at once it was done, and after years of neglecting the Moleskine for other notebooks I came back to it because of some of their limited edition designs. I knew that I was going to use the uni-ball Signo RT 0.5 as my pen or refill of choice (inside a BigiDesign Ti Arto or Ti Arto EDC), so I didn’t need fountain pen friendly paper. I had decided to pick up the steady journaling habit by starting with a travel journal, which I already had some experience with, and then carrying on from there. On the first evening of a trip to London I happened to walk by the Moleskine store in Covent Garden, and I decided to go in and check out what they had. There was a beautifully designed Batman limited edition notebook in exactly the kind of format I was looking for, and it was only available for sale at the Moleskine stores. I bought it, unwrapped and stamped it with the Moleskine Covent Garden stamps, and I haven’t looked back.

That pen and notebook combo has hardly changed over the years. What has changed is the format I use to journal, and the amount of daily journaling I do. When I started out I was used to only jotting a few lines down here and there when I journaled, so I knew I couldn’t expect to write 4-5 pages per day right from day one. Starting with just a paragraph to half a page a day, I pretty quickly moved to one page per day of just writing.

Then I saw a Neistat Brothers video on Youtube and realized that I could use my journal as a visual capturing device as well, and anything could go in it, so long as it made me remember a moment or a place.

Limited Edition Cola Zero tab created for the 2019 Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv. I don’t even drink Cola Zero, but this little piece of metal is still totally evocative to me.

That’s when the notebooks really started to get bloated. From clothing labels to business cards and ticket stubs, if I can put glue on it and it’s visually appealing or evocative, it goes in. I almost always also write a little note for future me, to remind myself what I’m looking at and why it’s there. That change really made these notebooks a kind of personal artifact for me, and I can’t say how precious they’ve all become.

A bit of cat themed washi tape and a Uniqlo shirt label. Sometimes things go in because I find them visually appealing or they make me smile.

At a certain point I started getting ambitious, moving from writing one page a day to two pages, then four pages, then six. That’s when I had to take a step back and make sure that I wasn’t burning out on journaling for all the wrong reasons. I enjoy writing and I enjoy journaling, but I’m also trying to write fiction, and my journal can’t become something that consumes that, an excuse for not writing. It’s also easy to get carried away and want to finish the notebook as fast as possible just so you can open a fresh one, or brag (even if it’s only to yourself) that you’ve finished a notebook. Nowadays I write one or two pages a day for most days, moving up to more pages only if I really have something special to write about.

Doodling seasonal fruit in the margins.

Life also happens, and oftentimes it’s scary and ugly, a black hole that threatens to consume all that is good in your life, including journaling. My mom got unexpectedly and very seriously ill last year, and we’ve been struggling with her disease ever since. When she was in hospital I couldn’t bring myself to journal. I backlogged those (thankfully few) dark days, and I realized that I would have to accept that as much as journaling is important to me, family comes first, so backlogging is going to have to become acceptable. I try to backlog as little as possible, but some days just demand that.

If I want to remember a good meal I’ll sometimes draw it.

I also draw a little in my notebook, tiny thumbnails of things that I want to remember later, or that I just feel like drawing. These are usually food doodles, as I don’t really like to photograph my food.

I still use my journal in trips, and ticket stubs and bit and bobs like these make it more interesting.

If you’re looking for some journaling tips, I wrote two posts on that subject here and here. If there’s one thing I can leave you with it’s that if you want to journal, you need to figure out a way to it make it work for you, and be ready to adapt as your life changes over time. There is no perfect journaling system, or perfect journaling notebook, there’s only what works for you.

Go write.

Two Years of Daily Journaling