Paper Antics

Are any of you out there like me? I decided this year I was going to go for it! I’m going to get my life in order! I’m really going to take action and create and accomplish goals! Hey, I need a planner for that! And what do you know, they are on sale at Michael’s! And aren’t they all so cute? How do I decide which one is right for me? Well I guess I decided on the one I liked the saying on front the best. I mean, how else do you decide? Oh, and Planner Stickers, again, they are all so darn cute. I need a pack of one of everything. 😜 Yes, I know, they are two different sets of stickers for two different types of planners. Of which I think neither set fits my actual planner. But hey that’s why they put a pocket and a zipper pouch in the back. Did I lead you to believe I was good at this yet? LOL

And of course, I bought a budget insert also. I’ve never made a budget before. If I had, the funds available for that category probably would’ve told me not to buy the budget booklet. But I am operating under the utmost giddy excitement of optimism and so the budget planner also, is mine. So this is how the most excellent, most organized, most goalsetting, most productive year begins… or does it?

… fast forward to July…hmmm.. I haven’t quite figured out how to use my planner effectively for my most productive year. It’s really sort of empty still. But my brain is working overtime and all the ideas that swim around in my head are overwhelming me. I want to remember each and every one of them. Because let’s face it, some of those ideas are pretty darn awesome. I have done many things already this year working towards new things that I want, but they haven’t been structured or organized to accomplish any solid goal. I have created fun and pretty things, listened to great audiobooks, gotten oohs and aahs from family members and friends for my efforts. But haven’t moved forward in accomplishments. And I want to. And I have this lovely little planner that is mostly empty to this point mid year. I have got to at least get my thoughts down on paper. And the planner seems like an excellent place to do it.

In February when I first bought my planner and had all these grand plans, of course I got out the stickers and marked each new month starting with February. Because in an unmarked, unmonthed (yeah, I just made up that word) planner you can do this. But as I said, come end of July, all the months since February are pretty much empty. I made a bit of a go of it, but not much.

So I started to use all those blank months as my notepads and category keepers. Because even though I hadn’t been using the planner a lot, I tow it back-and-forth with me each and every day in hopes of using it. So what better place to put all of my random ideas from scraps of paper, notes from my phone, and ideas swimming around in my head.

I apologize. My kitchen table is my main crafting area, and my scribbled notes frequently get buried and lost. It is definitely not an Instagram worthy photo, but it is my life. Quite possibly like some of yours… and all these random notes are what I am trying to corral into one place.

I’m a paperholic. I love card stock, hence this blog. So I have oodles and oodles of pads of pretty card stock. And I have a crafting space with oodles and oodles of SCRAPS of pretty card stock that are being saved for who knows what, but there has to be something crafty I’m saving them for…lightbulb…TABS.. I will be using some of them for tabs for my new categories for my unused planner pages.

And you know, as an avid crafter, I have a corner rounder. Perfect. I’m going to round the corners of my tabs because, well, it’s just better that way.

I now have three or four categories that I can begin to condense all my thoughts, wishes, and dreams. Goals?… Not yet. But I’m moving in a direction. I’m not sure what direction, but I am moving. And that’s important because in the doing itself, anything you do, anything at all, helps to propel you forward. It is my experience that in the doing, other thoughts and ideas come into play and doors open that you didn’t know existed.

So start by opening that unused planner, jot down anything you want in it and carry it with you every day. If you are a creative person then you have endless thoughts and ideas that you would like to someday implement or create. But sometimes those thoughts and ideas get forgotten no matter how great they were. Get them on paper. Put them in that planner in your empty months at the beginning of the year. And hopefully very soon you will begin to implement those ideas that had gotten lost and you could be one step closer to actually using that goal planner for its intended purpose!