The stack!
B5 Sterling Ink 5 year diary
A5 Journey Planner
A5 Leuchturm (and Martina Calvi’s A Year of Junk Journaling)
A5 Hobonichi Hon
MakseLife undated monthly
Making Treasures maker’s notebook (not shown in the video)
(Apologies for the weird jitteriness in a few spots. I just got a new phone and clearly there’s some adjustments to be made although I’m loving the image quality.)
My video ended up a bit more all over the place than I was hoping. Talking is hard! If you keep reading, I’ll expand a bit on what I talked about in the video.
2025 was not a good journal/ planner year for me. I think it’s because I don’t have a great workspace in my house. We have an exterior office which is amazing, but often being used during the day for like, actual work by my husband, and my youngest has been having super rough time with the bedtime transition (he has no business taking a nap at school if it means he’s awake until 11 pm…), meaning I can’t be in the office at night, either, since my husband is usually gone working out at that time.
I dream of having a desk again in our sunny sunroom, which is currently a playroom…
In the meantime, I do finally have a desk in my bedroom, and though it’s a little gloomy in there, I’m hoping having a dedicated space to work in my journals will help me be in them more often. I miss them! And, like I mentioned in the video, I figured out a good filming set up without having to move my (very heavy) sewing machine. So, I hope I will be able to share some flip-throughs in the future.
Something I didn’t talk much about in the video were my plans for 2026. My “theme” (I use this word very loosely) for the year is community and connection. I want desperately to unplug from my phone and to spend more time doing the things I love in community with others who love the same thing.
There’s lots of craft/ journal meet ups popping up (Art Gurl started a database). I’m keeping tabs on 3 or 4 in my city, and hoping to do some junk journaling in community in the new year. Martina Calvi’s A Year of Junk Journaling will be my inspo!
In addition to my in-person book club, I signed up for Governnerds Insider, Footnotes and Tangents (I will be reading the Wolf Hall trilogy and rereading War and Peace) and am planning to make a return to the Hardcore Literature Patreon (Ben’s reading lists are not for the weak; I wish the Patreon platform were better with nested comments, etc. as I find the community aspect difficult to navigate, but in this particular case, I’m mostly interested in the lectures). There are so many read alongs and book clubs on Substack and Patreon these days; for me, I’ve realized I must have audio/video content to follow along.
I mentioned in the video how knitting has become a bigger part of my life the last few years. I’m officially a sock knitter now (something I was not at all interested in making when I first learned to knit twenty! years ago), and recently joined Farmer’s Daughter Fibers sock squad. I’m excited about this one in particular because there are prizes each month for completing your socks (or whatever you decide to make) by the end of the month AND if you complete all twelve months, there’s a grand prize of $1000 shop credit. Which would seriously be so fun! I’m also doing a blanket club through Stix and a second sock yarn subscription… it’s definitely possible this will be too much yarn to keep up with, but I hope not! I also want to prioritize joining (virtual) knitting or sewing make alongs. I’ve seen them pop up in my Instagram feed (I was sooo close to doing the Hurry Home x Rue sew along and kinda regret not just jumping in but I really had no business attempting it) but have never joined in. Sometimes there are prizes, which is a fun bonus. But really, I just do cool shit with cool people! That’s the vibe.
Writing-wise, I realized when I started doing my annual review just how many writing classes I took last year. Six! Three of them were with Rachel and were highly productive, though I must give Minda Honey’s Daddy Dearest class credit for getting me back in memoir-mode. In 2026, I’d like to do fewer classes and more work on my own. (Actually, I’d love to take Deeper Drafts again but I’m scheduled to be at a yoga retreat in Mexico during most of it. The retreat is super chill so if it comes with good internet access I might think about signing up anyway.) I have a romance novel almost plotted out and some pie-in-the-sky dream of accumulating 100 pieces of poetry/ flash to submit to lit mags?? And while I don’t really want to do a lot of writing classes this year (though maybe something will pop up that’s tempting), I am eyeing memberships to The Fountain and Two Sylvia’s Press.
Always lots to do at home, too. Between homeschooling one kid and keeping up with another’s roster of daily prescription and OTC meds/ supplements, plus his therapies and tutoring, my mental load is significant. Still, I dream of of baking my way through The Art of Gluten Free Bread, making more cakes, and figuring out how to cook in a way that is appealing to me and the rest of my family (currently, there’s not a lot of overlap). And, my house could probably be cleaner, so there’s that.
I should be busy and I want to be busy with the things that matter to me. I’ve always been a project/ hobby girlie and it feels good to still claim that for myself in my 40s, although I have to be mindful of how my energy fluctuates due to hormones/ how emotionally regulated my kids are. I hope that all of these big goals and little daily habits will be well documented in my Hon this year, which is my “personal space” (h/t Erin Ware) planner.
In the video, I waffled a bit about what’s next for this newsletter, given how absent I’ve been this year. It is/ was an issue of time and energy but also a little bit about not having a clear vision for what I wanted to share. When I thought about giving up on this space I realized I really didn’t want to— and got an idea for a post, which I’ve been working on and will be up (hopefully) soon after this one. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I really do want to share journal pages and creative inspo and I think there is more of that to come, just not on a consistent posting schedule : )
Anyway, that’s a little peek at where I’m headed in 2026. Drop your stack below!
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.