So, I bought a planner
The title says it all. I wrote before about how I was getting into physical notebooks and, at the time, I didn't see a reason to go after a planner — I spent my days usually working on only one thing, so no need for an hourly logbook, and I have very few commitments and obligations outside my home that would require keeping track of. Now, with me moving back to Brazil, things might get a bit more hectic because I want to take some random classes on random stuff and don't like using digital calendars. I mean, they are fine, I track deadlines with them, but doing other things is usually more of a pain than it's worth it.
In any case, I don't need a one-page-per-day thing because my life will still be boring and uneventful as it ever was. But I found out about planners with one week on one page and a blank page right next to it, and that turned some gears in my mind. Yeah, I've never seen one of these before, I'm not really into the stationery world, so I have no idea what's out there — I just want a good pen and good paper. Anyway, I started looking around for options, because I then thought "hey, I can keep track of my weekly commitments this way, including deadlines, and if I buy an A6 notebook, I can carry both and have all my non-work-related needs easily accessible".
I had no idea what brand to buy, though, but having seen people talk about Hobonichi for years now, I decided to check it out. It feels silly now, but I had absolutely no idea that this company was founded by the guy who wrote Earthbound. Not that it matters in any way, but it's a weird point of connection. So, I open the website, start checking their line-up, and find out they have a weekly planner. Awesome.
Now, Hobonichi isn't the easiest thing to find in Europe, especially in Portugal, but I found two large stationery stores — one in Italy, another in Spain — that stock many of their products, so I went ahead and bought a Hobonichi Weeks Cosmo Blue from the Spanish store. It was kind if an impulsive buy, but I don't regret it — the pseudo-hard cover feels really nice, and the paper (Tomoe River) is as smooth as the Midori I'm familiar with, but seems to absorb better the ink from my fineliners, which are the only kind of pens I use to write. Great quality, great feel, nice extras, no regrets. Here's a picture.
"Wait a minute...", you might say, "why are there two of them?"
Well... you see, I started thinking about the original idea of carrying an A6 notebook together with this planner, and it sounded kinda bothersome. The Hobonichi Weeks has 70-something empty pages in the back to use in whatever way you want, which is great, but it's not that many, so that's why I thought about the A6 thing. However, there's a version of this planner, the Hobonichi Weeks Mega, with 220 empty pages on the back — more than most A6 notebooks. Considering it's 1 cm narrower than an A6 page, but 4 cm higher, it has more space overall to write. As I had already written some stuff on the one I bought, I couldn't return it, so I just bought another one.
And it was the right version, but the wrong model — a soft cover instead of a hard one, and no bookmarks. I don't hate it, though I like the hardcover texture better, but this one feels more like a notebook than a planner, which suits me fine. I'll use the planner part to, well, plan my weeks in 2026, and the empty pages on the back will be used to write random ideas and plans for projects that would go on the A6 notebook (and I'm just filling up the last pages on my A5, so great timing). Problem solved, now I have a 2-in-1 object that's easy to carry around. The planner with the hardcover will stay at home and be used to track some personal stuff I don't want mixed with day-to-day activities or creative processes.
I've been documenting work stuff I've done in a blank notebook, just adding the dates and writing whatever's happened, which is a great idea to build a timeline of events — so I can check how some stuff went down — but terrible to actually plan ahead. The Hobonichi format will make this easier, having just the right amount of space on the weeks part, and just enough empty pages on the back to last me through the year when writing on random topics.
We'll see how this little experiment will go, but I think it might work just fine. I'm actually kinda excited to start scribbling on this thing like a madman.