Leaving better breadcrumbs in my Hobonichi’s tracker

This post builds on my prior reflection into how I’ve used my Hobonichi planner so far this calendar year. I thought through what is working so far this calendar year. This week, I’m considering an aspect of my planning approach that can serve me better: habit tracking in the year overview pages.

A review of the pages I’m actively using, periodically referencing, and neglecting highlights two areas in need to dedicated reconfiguring: my habit tracking pages and the notes pages. The beginning and end of my notebook, respectively. Let’s begin, this week, with the beginning.

Tracking my habits is a doubly-rewarding practice. The tracker keeps me mildly accountable for taking up important-to-me tasks. I measure habit success by how meaningfully I return to practices like journaling and reading. Success lives across sequences of days. Often is the bar to meet. Material practice over time.

Just listen to those proud, accomplished squiggles

Self care is the intentional heart of my tracking. I’ve written before about how long strings of missed tracking visually marks when I need to ask for help. And 2024’s tracker pages are pocked with stacks of empty rows. Transitioning cities, jobs, and navigating my partner joining the military proved a lot to handle. Family support has me dutifully filling my tracker once again. Boo-ya.

Boo-ya, indeed: Now with hug-worthy squiggles

That said, I have also back-filled weeks of tasks because I simply forgot to turn to my habit tracking pages. Tracked elsewhere but not scribbled into tiny boxes. An entirely different genre of not tracking.

I converted Hobonichi’s yearly overview pages into my tracker — pages which live at the very front of the Day-Free notebook. I can call better attention to the overview spreads.

I currently use a book dart to mark my active habit tracking page. The book dart sits flush against the outside edge of the page, blending into the notebook’s outer profile. Subtle.

A (metaphorically) louder page marker would call attention to my habit tracker spreads. My [midori clips] clips have a larger footprint.

Just what the scholar ordered

Status checked.

This week’s Inked Tines update includes last week’s currently inked writing tools.

Toolset

Pens. The Sith ruled the week. More specifically, my Star Wars 3776 provided hands-down the best experience writing with a shimmer-heavy ink in my fountain pen era. As such, the Plantinum 3776, inked with Jacques Herbin’s Gris Orage was an easy standout combo this past week. Reliable on all paper without clogs, snags, or burps. Downright chivalrous. 1/5.

• Platinum 3776 (M) — Feed. Well used for journaling, D&D notes, lesson plan outlines, and every single meeting. Impressively avoided clogging, care of Platinum’s slip-and-seal capping system.

• Nahvalur Schuylkill (EF) — 1/6. The wet EF nib keeps Pumpkin Cake a deep burgundy-brown with only whiffs of lighter coloring. Reading notes, marking papers, D&D notes, and journaling.

• Gravitas Vac (M Imperial) — 1/4. The Vac’s section is the right width for my hand, which encouraged me to write long teaching reflections. Also: journaling.

• TWSBI 580 (F) — 1/4. The modified firehose feed renders Psc into a usable, pencil-feedback writer. Lesson plans, accent notes, margin notes, and manuscript revisions. Easily viewed alongside dark inks.

• Mythic Aeschylus (B) — 1/2. An all-star combination of wet-enough nib and powerfully shading ink. Narrow section and long barrel combine for comfortable longform writing and detailed lesson arranging.

Notebooks. Work bujo. Midori MD Grid (A5).  I started my prep for last week’s teaching on page 25. Looking back seven days later reveals ten new pages. A newly-adapted two-page weekly task list, six single-page lesson plan outlines, and two pages of meeting notes. A stationery sprint.

My weekly spread is an exercise in wringing multiple uses out of a single EF-width line. The week’s teaching schedule lives as a ticker along the topmost five rows of both pages.

The teaching tracker is four rows tall, underneath a reader row, instead of last year’s five with a sixth for listing dates. Shifting one additional row down into my daily task lists gives me a row for one additional task on my teaching-light Tuesdays. Copacetic.

Platinum’s F nib keeps small writing clean and accurately scannable. Gris Orage’s shimmer lends a subtle, infrequent fabulosity (pretend that’s a word). And, the best part is that the compact four-item schedules pull double-duty as my daily tracker — telling me which classes I’ve taught and which are forthcoming.

A soothsayer with eyes on classes yet to come

The week’s lesson plan outlines favored the shading-heavy Birmingham Chrysan Themum (thank you, @quillypig!) and the shimmery Dominant Industry’s Autumn Forest. Two kinds of fancy. Two kinds of wide lines. Two outlines in each color.

With camera-shy shimmer

Journal. Semikolon Fango (A5). It was a light journaling week for me. Two new entries, the first on Tuesday evening and the second on Thursday. Six new pages in all. 56% through this hardcover Semikolon notebook.

This is what the semi in semikolon means

I used the broadest nib in my currently inked (the Mythic Aeschylus) for Tuesday’s longform targeted reflection on the kinds of news I’ve been reading. The Mythic’s unground B nib writes at forgiving angles, which let my mind wander away from disciplined writing angles to the kinds of news I’ve want to curate for myself moving forward. Ah, adulting.

The pink-purple letters of personal planning

I also began a mini-project of transcribing Jim Harrison’s poem “The Golden Window” one stanza an entry. The Gravitas (Aonibi) and Platinum 3776 (Autumn Forest) started the project off.

Written dry. The Platinum 3776 is down to only the ink in its feed. Low enough that I feel swapping to a new pairing is warranted so as to avoid the pen running dry during a meeting. A salient worry given that I used that pen in every meeting last week.

Goodbye, you sweet brown-green shimmery ink

Newly inked. I committed to my original six pen-and-ink combinations. A well-balanced currently inked does wonder for focusing my attention on the pens already inside my Esterbrook 2Go.

You are enough just as you are

The collection

Incoming / new orders. No new orders arrived this week. It’s quite alright to revel in the pens, inks, and notebooks already housed in my collection.

Outgoing / trades or sales. I gifted a large pen cup full of Jinhao, Wing Sung, and KACO Green pens to two local friends who are just entering the hobby. Those Jinhao 82’s, in particular, are reliable writers that start new folks off right: with low-cost, joyful writing experiences.

Currently reading and listening

Fiction. I read no fiction for myself last week. I spent an inordinate amount of time navigating the choppy waters of last week’s pen-world drama. And revisiting past personal experiences with anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination as I processed it all.

While frustrated and disappointed, the widespread outpouring of support from folks in our stationery and fountain pen communities was a buoy. Sincere support for acceptance across the stationery mediasphere is encouraging and empowering.   

Nonfiction. Instead of fiction, I dove into nonfiction for my emotional well-being. Reflections on what more-welcoming communities might look like. I am spearheading a new elective at my school, which we’re calling “Queer History.” My nonfiction reading overwhelmingly supported crafting a suitable reading list for my students - a task that helped me feel like I was “doing something helpful.” A return to the classics of Queer Theory — to the extent that there is such a thing — to help me define an accessible conceptual lens for my students’ nascent historical journeying.

My Mitsubishi 9852 pencil, Zebra Mildliner highlighters, and brass Dux sharpener motored me through multiple texts, from Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, J.J. Halberstam, Lance T. McCready, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

Margin fillers

My kind of liberatory analog nerdery. And a suitable compass during a turn-tossed week.

Music. I combined three different playlists together into one too-large compilation of low-key music for me to write and read to. Over thirty hours of music resulted. That’s … a lot.

Last week’s editing began the long process of curating down to instrumental-only songs of middling energy level. The editing is ongoing, but this is where my listening attended last week.

You’re welcome to give the playlist a kind ear. And, as always, recommendations are always appreciated.