A new Moleskine year

I finally bought my prized Moleskine weekly planner for 2010. And I even got a discount! For those who are interested, my red Moleskin notebook is the primary inspiration for this blog. What's inside my planner, you ask? Lots of stuff--from daily schedules to vacation plans to important contacts to useless doodles. It is a hodgepodge of my past, present, and future in a neat 3x5-inch journal.

I like keeping planners but I'm never good at maintaining large ones (i.e. Starbucks's clone planners). In the past, my weekly notebooks are full of blank spaces, not because I'm too busy to jot down notes but because I'm lazy. I am a disorganized indolent sloppy person. SERIOUSLY.

Anyway, my red notebook cost me a thousand, a rather useless way of spending hard-earned pesos. But on the other side of the spectrum, P1,000 is a cheap way to organize my otherwise spontaneous life. It's a good way for me to plot my current responsibilities alongside future plans. In my notebook, events coincide neatly.

My Moleskine life started when my former Art Director Manuel Roma gave it to me as a makeshift pasalubong from his brief Hong Kong trip. I used it nonetheless because I want to please him and simply because it's there. After a year of using it, I realized my life had direction. In short, the most fulfilling year of my post-college life was the same year I started using Moleskine!

According to the little info sheet that comes with the notebook, Moleskine is used by European thinkers and artists like Van Gogh, Picasso, Chatwin, and Hemingway. Imagine my bliss when I this found out! My then Managing Editor Criselda Yabes noticed my red notebook and I told her: It means I'm destined for greatness. She laughed, nodding.

We've been friends since.

When I moved to my current job, my editor Marites Vitug happily told me its the notebook she wants to buy for herself. Now I'm seriously thinking of getting one for her. Too bad she couldn't use it for her new book, but I hope she'll be able to use it for future works.

To cut this short (I'm not paid to write this, by the way), Moleskine is not just a notebook, it's a physical manifestation of what I can achieve. It makes me plan ahead while taking note of what I'm currently doing. I told you, it's like a room where my past, present, and future move in sync with each other.

Now, I'm looking forward to 2010! :)

(Fyi, I didn't get a notebook this year. No wonder it turned out mediocre.)