My Planner: A Love/Hate Relationship
I have a new planner. A friend of mine found these online and knowing that I was reading Living the Christian Year and trying to live into the liturgical calendar this year, she thought I might like to try one. I haven’t decided whether to thank her or ‘unfriend’ her.
The first day I loved it! The child whose father owned an office supply store, I had unlimited access to Blue Horse Tablets, #2 Wallace pencils, college-ruled composition notebooks, and yellow legal pads. I loved fresh paper and new pens. The teacher, too, loves a clean page on which to write and plan. Maybe that type of child becomes a teacher. I was eager and enthusiastic when I first opened the book.
For the last few years I have used strictly a digital calendar, which I love for many reasons; not the least of which is entering the dentist’s appointment on my phone’s calendar right there in the office. Seconds later that appointment is also on my computer’s calendar. Gone is the small reminder card which once got lost in the black hole of my purse for weeks. I miss, however, not being able to reflect on the calendar and make notes to myself about what did and did not work. After I had completely exhausted myself over Christmas one year in the days of a paper calendar, a friend suggested I put a sticky note on next year’s December which read: ELIMINATE ONE THING! I did. It worked. I haven’t mailed out a Christmas card since that sticky note got put on December. I use “old school paper” for my teacher plan book and I write in pencil so I can change easily – which I do often. I go back and write reflections in colored ink about what works and what doesn’t, what needs more time, or less time.
I thought this new planner would be like that, a place to reflect on my pace of life and note adjustments I needed to make, and a reminder to fuse the practical tasks into the liturgical season. The planner starts the year with a space for writing one’s own rule of life, then each day provides readings from the daily office along with a list of three projects one would like to accomplish. Underneath the project list is a daily schedule space and a small white space for other notes or thoughts related to the readings or anything else.
This was my first frustration. No way was the book adequate to serve as my journal. I’m voluble, loquacious, verbose. For years I’ve kept a black Moleskin journal, the receptacle of thoughts, prayers, feelings that come tumbling out of my mind. I reflect and ponder and try to make meaning of what is happening in my daily life. There the words excited, exhausted, afraid, overwhelmed, overjoyed show up. In those pages is the record of what I felt, perceived, or learned from what happened in my life. Or maybe just a record of what I coped with or survived.
My second pushback was that I’m still going to use my digital calendar – too convenient to give up.
Thirdly, I was trying to fill in those three project boxes every day and complete them in spite of how much might be listed on the daily schedule – transferred from my digital calendar, mind you. I found myself becoming driven by the tyranny of my own list, obsessing over the boxes. I wanted to check those boxes. The old taskmaster that drives me to accomplishment was rearing his head again.
I was about to give up on the whole thing, thinking it was only a complicated fusion of the calendar and the journal, duplicating what I already have and not serving its own purpose, but I couldn’t quite let it go. Hate gave way to love again.
The liturgical day planner is just that, a complicated fusion which represents me. It reveals me to myself. A calendar alone lets me feel accomplished and productive; a journal tells another truth – driven, sometimes exhausted, afraid, and pensive. In either book alone, I can deny the other side.
No wonder I love and hate this new book: it forces me to admit that my ‘to do’ list are too long and that I am the author of the list. Nobody but me is making that unrealistic list. When I get to the weekend it asks me to reflect on the previous week in terms of mind, body, spirit, home, relationships and work and reset for the next week. I’m forced every seven days to look back at how my intention (who I say I want to be) matched with how I scheduled my time and energy. My Moleskin journal and my digital calendar don’t talk to me this way. They don’t ask me to evaluate my schedule or force me to look back at previous pages. I can continue my dualism in those two separate books.
It’s only January. I haven’t even made it to Lent yet. I make no promises about my relationship with the liturgical planner for all of 2016. We are ‘still just dating’ so to speak. A wise friend once told me, “When you feel yourself resisting, lean in. It’s usually what you need.” I definitely met resistance within myself. For now, I’m choosing love and leaning into the planner
