My Filofax Obsession Begins … Again!

My Filofax blog-life begins, today! I will use the opportunity to write, gush, expound and otherwise and in general ramble on. You have been warned 🙂

My blog begins where all good Filofax blogs begin: with a new arrival. A long-awaited / edge-of-my-seat / watched-all-13-episodes-in-a-row-of-Netflix-House-of-Cards-miniseries-to-make-the-time-pass-faster kind of wait. And so as soon I received my “Your Order has Shipped” email, the clock started ticking, marked by hourly page-refreshes of this webpage:

That was earlier today. I am pleased to report that the coveted package is now in my possession. But before I get to that, a little bit about me. Or a lot. I have waited this long, so now I’m gonna write!

I’m a former 5-year Filofax user from eons ago. Not “eons” as in the big-shoulder-pad “Working Girl” filofaxery heyday of the 1980s, but also not so recent that I could tell you the style name. I just know that it was red. And that I loved carrying it around everywhere I went.

My filofax was a fixture in my handbag (my other obsession) that kept me grounded in time and space. With just a flip of the page, I could tell you exactly who I needed to call, who to write, what to do, when to do it, and where. And as you can imagine after 5 years of use, it became quite filled, overpacked and full of all the details of life. Yes, it was heavy. Yes, it needed constant updating. But it was also, pure cherry red joy.

Maybe it was the rise of technology, making me feel a little bit old-fashioned for using a planner when everyone else was participating in their great dreams of the future, via their futuristic devices, aka, the Palm Pilot. I started questioning my love of Filofax. Then came motherhood, a million distractions of life, and one day, I simply stopped using my beloved red agenda. It got banished to some attic, or perhaps it was a basement, or some other reliquary of all things pre-motherhood. Meaning, I have no clue where it is. (But I do have about 21,349 photos of my daughter on my smartphone! Indeed, when one door closes another opens. But that’s a story for another day.)

So I made the requisite transition to tech, following the familiar trajectory of Outlook to Google calendar, then to the entire slew of online time-management systems and to-do apps for laptop, phone and tablet including Basecamp, ToodleDo, Remember the Milk, Wunderlist, Astrid, Nozbe, iCal, Teux Deux, etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseum. I no longer could make heads or tails of my life, which somehow no longer felt more “accessible” due to their online eternal availability, but inaccessible, for the same reasons. Having 100% complete access from any laptop, phone or tablet in the world suddenly made my schedule seem like a free-for all game of roulette. Spin the wheel, and see where you come out on the other side. I didn’t feel more in control of my life, but less. Was I going insane? Was I a relic of the past incapable of keeping up with the tidal wave of the future that is technology?

Then, sometime during the New Year, while reading news of fiscal cliffs, corporate wars and other Mayan doomsday near-misses, I stumbled upon an article in the NY Times called “Yearly Date with a Planner”. What? A planner? People still wrote about these things? Meaning, they still wrote about writing … with pen and paper? I almost dismissed the article when I saw that it was written by an author (in which a curmudgeonly Ernest Hemingway type instantly came to mind). But then I saw that this was not just any author , but a young, 20-something girl-about-town and otherwise presumed full-fledged consumer of all things shiny, new and 4G-connected, yet in her words, was not. Now this was news worth writing about (and reading)!

I relished every word of the article, feeling equal parts exoneration and bittersweet loss for the life I had just now lived, un-memorialized as it were, without my Filofax.  The author wrote about feeling a bit anachronistic in her love of her red leather agenda, but somehow, connected to something a bit more special, and even, elegant: “I look at ladies with cigarette clutches at fancy affairs and I think: where do they keep their lives, in their phones? “

The article brought back a flood of memories. I was instantly transported back to less-streamlined but dreamier times, days dreamed on paper, savoring the empty pages of a new year ahead. Ever since I first understood the idea of an “agenda”  (when I was 10-ish years old, and a neighbor gave me a Hallmark pocket calendar that had come with free with one of her purchases), I have been equally charmed and obsessed with the idea of planning my life, in the pages of a book. I wanted to  know what that felt like, again.

I immediately went online to find a new agenda. This time, I would explore the entire gamut. I wanted to make sure that my first love, Filofax, wasn’t just a fluke.

I went to Target to find some agendas I could experiment with, without putting in too much of an investment. I picked up a few wire-bound agendas in cute patterns to play around with at home. I loved this one in particular. The cheerful cover just makes me smile:

But even more, I love the calendar pages. The punchy-colored borders and tabs are eye-catching, and helpful for organization. I love the color combo of slate, orange and gold:

(no idea why that photo is so small, and backwards too!)

I headed over to Papyrus (and I’m always looking for an excuse to go to Papyrus!) and bought this cute little thing, which I knew wasn’t going to be very useful at 3″ x 5″ but loved the logo, which then inspired the name of this blog:

Cute, right? But now, it was time to get down to business. I went to the online retailer Levenger, which made the wallet I had used for 5 years (it seems I tend to use leather goods for about 5 years). There I discovered the Circa, a disc-based notebook system. What a brilliant idea, I thought. Equally impressive was the growing number of GTD users who were now incorporating Circa into their time-management systems. Having just read the David Allen book, I had to give it a try. Here is the black leather one that I bought, which is similar in size to A5:

I used that for a few weeks. I liked the versatility of re-arranging pages and even bought a special “hole” puncher so I could create my own pages. But truth be told, I just couldn’t get passed the plastic discs. They weren’t quite the look I was going for. I needed a bit more beauty.

So, I hit the retail stores:  Coach, Kate Spade, and *just to compare*, Louis Vuitton and Hermes, too. Sure enough, there was no shortage of beauty here. Nor of price! I quickly moved on.

And so, having done my due diligence, and all the wiser and more-educated for it, I realized that I needed to return to Filofax. My 5 year relationship with my red filofax was not a mere infatuation after all. It was true love.

I set out to find a new Filofax. This would be quite the task, given all the things that this new Filofax must live up to: to be as good as the last one, but additionally manage two new and significant factors of my life: motherhood and a self-employed business.

I googled Filofax to bring up the Filofax company site. But I was amazed at what I found. Of course, the Filofax website, but on top of that, a whole world of Filofaxers sharing their filo-love on the web. I found people who aren’t smartphoning their schedules, but documenting and planning their lives with pen and paper and making it even more fun by blogging, photographing and You-Tube-ing it on the web. And discussing, swapping, sharing, yearning, dreaming, aspiring and all around sharing their excitement for Filofax as not just a tool of life, but a way of life. I found people who understand that carrying around an agenda isn’t an old-fashioned notion of the past, nor is it a heavy burden – it’s a joy!

My Filofax journey has come full circle . I have become a Filofax user once again .. and now, a Filofax blogger too! The best of both worlds.

And so, when picking out the style, I decided that this was not just a purchase, but an investment. And that a small celebration was in order, a.k.a, a teeny little splurge. I’ll be cutting back on my Starbucks this month to make amends, but it will be so very, very worth it! 🙂

And so without further ado, I am super excited to present my brand new Filofax: a gorgeous crocodile-print leather A5 Osterley in a sumptuous 2-tone wine. The unveiling begins, here: