(no subject)

[darchildre]

So, the other day, I realized that the Traveler's Company had restocked their 2022 limited edition sets. At the beginning of the year, I had noticed the train-themed set and desperately wanted it, but put off buying it till it was out of stock and then figured I had missed it. But no! So I have now purchased it and it is on its way to me - I'm very excited about it.

Because I did this, though, I've been thinking about how I use my current Traveler's Notebook, and how I want to use this new one. A little over a year ago, I replaced my standard wallet with a passport-sized TN* - it is blue leather and thoroughly worn-in and I love it very much. I've generally used the wallet for shopping lists/writing down important dates/lists of books and movies to investigate/keeping track of row counts for knitting, etc. Over time, though, a lot of this has migrated to being stuff I keep track of on my phone. I find that I don't much like that - I'd prefer to have my external brain in an analogue device that doesn't require charging and where google can't spy on me. So I'm currently making a conscious effort to migrate back to my notebook, and to try to use it preferentially**.

So I have replaced the ratty blank insert in my wallet notebook with a shiny new dot-grid one and have made Notebook Organization Plans. The wallet notebook is for anything I want to remember during the day. That gets looked over in the evening, when I write in my journal, in case anything needs to be transferred. And the new train TN is going to literally be a traveler's notebook, for keeping track of stuff and journaling whenever I go anywhere.

The trouble, of course, is that I now want to buy more inserts. I should probably have a calendar for my wallet, right?





*I've always been the kind of person who likes to carry a notebook with me everywhere I go and that presents issues when you're also the kind of person who generally doesn't carry a bag in daily life. I had tried a bunch of ways of carrying a pocket notebook and the TN is the only one that a) isn't uncomfortable for me and b) doesn't destroy the notebook within a month or two.

**The absurd and complex system of alarms/reminders is staying on the phone, since a notebook can't beep at me. (Most of my alarms are anxiety-assuaging devices. I'm not actually going to forget to do the thing, but if I don't set an alarm I'll spend all the intervening time worrying about what time it is and am I going to be late. Setting the alarm lets my phone worry about that instead of me.)