#notebook posting

[annadiplosis]

2024 in notebooks (#40 - #44)

2024 also marks my frist time starting a planner and sticking to it for the whole year! I still use my notebooks to plan tons of stuff, but my everyday life has become convoluted enough that I need a single place to write it all down. I got a Hobonichi Weeks, didn't use it in a particularly groundbreaking or super aesthetic way, and absolutely loved it.

[annadiplosis]

2025 in notebooks (#45 - #49)

[annadiplosis]

The moment I realized I could get a transparent cover for my notebooks and create a whole new cover under that is probably the most powerful I've felt in my entire life.

Some notes and sticker credit ↓

42: stickers sent to me by @belovedapollo ♡

44: sticker by the brilliant @sweatermuppet

45: the original cover had a quote that said, "Originality consists in returning to the origin— A. Gaudí," so I made an anagram of it. Match sticker by @choodraws, whose sticker sheets are one of my favorite things in the world (you can see a couple of them in 43's cover as well).

46.1: Don Patch of Sun gifted to me by @sillyknightagain ♡

47: I amazingly had two cutouts of the exact same tile in different sizes and a piece of cardboard that matched them almost perfectly. Stickers from my one true love, the Tools & Toys Hobonichi box.

The rest of the stickers come from random places and a collection sheets I've accumulated through the years so I couldn't 100% tell you where I got them! And I believe the Lunar Eclipse card comes from an oracle deck, but I bought it by itself.

[annadiplosis]

my life in 40 notebooks

[annadiplosis]

A few months ago I posted a couple photos of my index cards, saying I still didn’t know how and where I’d keep them, and I’ve since developed an Archiving System that combines the cards with a digital spreadsheet and has taken more hours than I will ever admit.

So, since I don’t have a “notebook system” to speak of, I'd like to share the way I archive my journals / sketchbooks / whatever you wanna call them, because I’m very proud of it, and who knows, someone might find it helpful :)

WHY I NEED AN ARCHIVING SYSTEM

The reason I don’t have a notebook system is because I use my books for absolutely everything, from sketches to grocery lists and journaling. It is crucial to me to not have any restrictions or expectations when it comes to my books, and that’s how I’ve managed to fill 43 of them over the years.

But of course, when you’ve been using notebooks without a system for most of your life and you want to read a specific entry, you can easily spend a full hour flipping through a sea of paper until you stumble upon those notes on the Bubonic Plague you took in 2011 or whatever you were trying to find.

SO HERE’S WHAT I DO

When I finish a notebook, I try to determine what its most important contents are: stuff I might want to reference in the future (project ideas, meeting notes) or is very characteristic of a period in my life (friends' drawings, travel logs). Every single page contributes to making the notebook what it is and gives it a unique personality, but not all of them are gonna be keepers, and that's fine (I'd even say fundamental, at least in my case).

These are the extremely generic categories I sort my Chosen Entries into. It's similar to the dot system so many people use, just applied retroactively:

🟣 Study notes 🔵 Work 🟢 Personal 🟡 Projects 🔴 Misc

And here's where the real archiving begins. This info goes into:

1. THE INDEX CARDS

(I always write them in Catalan; this one's a mockup and most of these are not real entries)

A little piece of cardboard with the notebook number, its start and end dates, and most important contents. I keep each index card inside its corresponding notebook, either in its own backpocket or an adhesive one I stick there myself.

This way, whenever I want to take a quick look through the book, I get a general idea of its contents at first glance. Sometimes, just holding it in my hand and reading the index card brings me back to the time when I was keeping it, and that time-travel feeling gives me a rush like no other. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm crazy about my notebooks.

2. THE SPREADSHEET

Same as before, just a couple more pieces of info (number of months, physical description) added to a file with the rest of my notebooks' data. Again, these are not real entries for privacy and language reasons, but they're very similar to the kind of stuff I do keep. The spreadsheet helps me find specific entries with a simple ctrl+f, and it's also a bird's-eye view of my progress through the years as a notebook keeper. I can see when my interests shift, how long some of my most important projects took to come to fruition, and even similar types of entries that repeat every few years which I wasn't even aware of before putting it all together. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

I hope this was useful, or interesting at the very least! If you’re a notebook keeper trying to find their own archiving system, my main advice would be to start early so you don’t have to deal with almost two decades of material like I did :’)

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask.

Good luck 🖤

[annadiplosis]

[2024 vs 2014]

Ever since I made that post about my archiving system, I’ve been thinking a lot about my notebooks and the way my understanding of them has changed throughout my life, especially for the last two or three years, so I’ve tried to put all my thoughts down in another post.

Let me preface all of this by saying I don't know who this post is for. I'm tempted to say it's just for me, but if it was… Well, I'd just write it in a notebook.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned multiple times on this blog, I’ve been keeping notebooks since I was a child. I started using them just for drawing, developed the habit of carrying one with me at all times, and ended up using them for absolutely everything. Whenever I needed to write, doodle, or scribble something, my book was there for me. I’ve never had a set structure: I simply use the next available page until there’s none left, and then I start a new notebook.

Although the basic mechanics of my notebooks have remained the same over the decades, my relationship to them has changed. At first, they were only tools: places I could keep my thoughts safe in, only to be used in the very short term and probably never touched again when I was done. They were an integral part of my life, but only in a practical sense.

A couple years ago, I moved out of the apartment I’d spent nearly a decade in. While preparing to leave, storing all my life in cardboard boxes, I realized I’d accumulated an insurmountable amount of loose pieces of paper. Concert tickets, magazine cutouts, napkin doodles, theater programs—most of which I had no place for and forced myself to throw away. It was right then and there that something clicked: everything not saved (written, drawn, glued, somehow kept) in a notebook would be lost forever.

The following summer, I ran away from the place I’d moved into, taking with me only as much as a couple of suitcases could carry. I packed a winter coat and all my notebooks, and never looked back. Everything not kept in a notebook was truly lost.

I’ve started looking at my notebooks as a life archive. They no longer serve only present me but also long-in-the-distant-future me. I number and date them as clearly as I can, have developed a system to find old entries more easily, and write stuff down in a way that will make sense in the long run (as opposed to your classic “I know what I mean”). My pages have never looked flawless and perfectly aesthetic, nor do I want them to, but now I decorate them to my heart’s content and have a great time doing it. All in all, and even though they’re still tools I use in my everyday life, I want my books to be nice places to stay in, be it right now or years down the line.

As I said in the beginning, I’m not sure what the purpose of this post is or where all these thoughts leave me. I just think it’s wonderful to have so many years of my life documented by myself, and the ability to look back on them is priceless. Sometimes a notebook is all I have, and that’s more than enough.

Thanks for reading. See you soon, probably, for more notebook posting.

[annadiplosis]

I would love to be able to doodle everywhere like you do! How do you find the inspiration to fill so many notebooks a year?

I'd say it's more about developing a habit than finding inspiration! I use my books as sketchbooks, diaries, planners, junk journals, and anything else you can use a notebook for, so they get filled really quickly. I just carry them with me at all times, and it kinda happens automatically.

A key factor in that, at least for me, is not being too precious about aesthetics: I prefer my pages to look nice, but not to the point where I'm more worried about form than function. Sometimes they're gonna be boring or ugly, which is perfectly fine because I don't need my grocery lists to look ig-worthy. And that's especially important for my sketchbook work! If everything had to be perfect, I would never draw, and I personally love my goofiest, almost stream of consciousness doodles. Look at this guy:

I don't know who he's talking to or why he got into mid-17th century fashion! But he's part of my notebook and I love him :p

[annadiplosis]

I've made index cards highlighting the most important contents of each one of my notebooks. Still haven't decided if I want to keep them all in the same place as a general archive or tuck them into their corresponding books for easy browsing, but I'm in love with them.

(Huge thanks/shoutout to @petite-gloom for talking about these particular index cards on her blog awhile ago! I discovered them thanks to her, and I couldn't be happier ♡)