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Transcript
We don't talk about bu.
What did you say?
I said don't worry about it.
That's perfect. Hello, and welcome to episode 176 of the Erasable Podcast. I'm Andy, on hosting duties today, and I am joined by the main bullets in my journal, Tim, the me mam wasom, and the meme ma'. Am. Wait, no, the meme man. It's either the mean man or the meme ma'. Am.
I'll take meme ma', am, Me ma',
am, and of course, Johnny. Hey, guys. Hey, Andy.
Hey, guys.
We're off to a good start.
Nailed it. Yeah.
Old one take wealthily, one take woefully. Me ma', am, Wasam and Johnny,
I need no introduction.
Well, we're about 1/12 of the way through 2022, and it has been a minute since we've really had an episode focused on productivity, because as you all know, we are in no way productive. So let's talk about planners. What have we been using lately? Are we going to try out anything different for 2022? Does any of it really matter? Because, you know, all of 22 can just go straight to the garbage. We'll get to all that in a minute, but first, let's check in on tools of the trade. Tim, what are you consuming and writing with?
I've been getting back into some crime novels, which I've really been having fun with. I went back. There's one I talked about a while ago called the Searcher by Tana French, who I know I've talked about before, but I had started that and was loving and got, like, halfway through it, and then started teaching and got distracted, and then I just went back and finished that. And then I started Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. And he is. I think. I mean, he's known for his novels because his crime novels are really good. And this is part of a trilogy about the war on drugs, Mexico, and the Mexican border, and. Which has gotten a lot of praise over the last several years. All. All three of them are out now. But he's also really well known as a lefty on Twitter. I don't know if you've seen any of his stuff. I mean, he's, like, all over the place, and he helps produce videos. He might have been part of the Lincoln project, I don't know. But he's, like, very out there on. On Twitter and entertaining. But, yeah, power. The dog's really good. And I. Jane and I have been watching the Bourne movies, which I love those so much in A long time. And they are. They're a lot of fun. We were really enjoying. We watched all four of the non Jeremy Renner one, like the. All the Matt Damon ones.
Oh, God. Yeah. That one was so bad.
So I have to admit I feel ridiculous, but I've never seen a single Bourne movie do both Matt Damon and Jeremy Brenner play the same character?
I don't think so. I have not seen it.
So. So the rumor was that. So Jason, Matt Damon did three movies and it was done like the storyline was tied up. And then they did it with. With Jeremy Renner and it was so bad. The rumor was that's why Brad Damon was like, no, I gotta do another one now.
One more?
Yeah, I think I got one more.
Really good.
Yeah, so I haven't watched yet. So we've watched. We watched those four. And the one thing about these born movies is that so many of his problems could be prevented by a hat. And it drives me crazy. If you just put a damn hat on, like, he could go anywhere. He's like the most skilled secret agent in America at the time, and yet they just keep following him around and spotting him from like a football field away because it's like, hey, that's him. Look, he looks exactly the same as he did in the last movie.
So what you're saying is if he combine his skills with Johnny Depp's like hat based acting, like they'd be unstoppable. Yeah, he would be.
We'd. We'd never. They wouldn't be able to finish the movie because they wouldn't be able to find him. Yeah, they would just. The whole movie would just be the CIA searching for him and it would be very boring, I guess. But yeah, yeah, dude needs a hat. And his problem, his life would be so much easier if you just put a toboggan on once in a while. I don't know. Especially because the female character that he's with is always like dyeing their hair different colors and he's. Yeah, that'll. That's good. And then he looks exactly the same as he always does. You're the one everybody's looking for, bud. Not the.
Go get some facial reconstruction surgery or something.
Yeah, come on, step up. And we have also been watching Book of Boba Fett actually. Really? Henry and I have been watching it. He. I. My son caught up on Mandalorian, so we started watching Book of Boba Fett and have just loved it. The last episode off recording, Johnny and I were talking about how much fun that episode is, which I don't want to say anything because it's new. I don't want to spoil it for anybody. But if you're not watching Book of Boba Fett Book of Boba Fett, you should do it. Make sure you watch Mandalorian first, though. And I'm writing with my red Trirex that I talked about in the last episode, and I am using some. I ordered some 4x6 index cards online and have been keeping them on my desk downstairs. And so I'm using one of those to take my notes.
Nice. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Johnny, how about you?
I've also been watching the Book of Bofette because. So good. And I'm not going to talk about All Creatures Great and Small, because that's on your list. But. But we start when we started restarted a film on a show. Oh, my God, that's on PBS called Vienna Blood. It's one of those, like, kind of cranky cop and smart nerdy guy that don't like each other that much, team up and solve crimes. And now they're friends. But in one of the first scenes, the police officer pulls out a little tin from his coat and starts chewing up coffee beans. This is my kind of show. So it's. It was really good. We'll start season two probably tonight. And I started reading a book called Notes from Underground, not to be confused with a book by Dostoevsky that's not completely horrible. And it was like an attempt at academic study of zines and their cultural and political significance. That was one of the worst books I've ever tried to read in my life. And I very rarely abandoned books. And I immediately got this book out of my home. This is so bad.
He should have just made a zine.
Oh, my God. So, like, does some cool stuff, but I don't think they have a proofreader like, on their staff. So that's, you know, it's frustrating to read a book full of typos. And like, that guy was sort of like in and out of this is not an academic book. But here I'm going to drop a GRE word. And I'm not Michael Chabon, so I click an idiot. And then he said that you can't define zines and then went on to say things about them which are true. Apparently not understanding that is the definition. So, yeah, if you're ever tempted to read that overpriced book, please don't read it or buy it and pulp it and make a zine out of It. That would be awesome. Really good. So I'm also reading what is it called? The Old ways by Robert McFarland who wrote Underland, but like just started it.
I thought I saw on Instagram you and your brother got each other a. Yeah, he opened.
I opened the present he got me. I was like, dude, would you get mine? So I didn't post a picture of us smiling. I probably should have. We look like we don't like books. But I'm writing with a retro 51 Susan, which is an exclusive of Penquisition with by Evan Rosenberg. And I have number 410, which is the area code here.
Wow. Why is it called a Susan? Is that named after someone or just
they ran out of which you named your pen?
Yeah, the back of it has a black eyed Susan, which is our state flower. Oh. And yeah, Ev. I think there's some left on their website. They're only 49 bucks, which I feel like is really cheap for a retro 51 pen.
I haven't used a retro 51 in a while now. I miss it. I've got.
I have.
I think I have two, but I've got them in their tubes and I haven't taking them out in a while. That makes me want to.
This one has a really nice like matte tactile thing going on with the paint. I really like it.
Didn't they like almost go out of business or something?
Am I remembering this right?
That they were like about shut down or.
And then somebody saved them or I don't know, outcry.
Yeah.
Don't go out of business. Take our money.
I feel. I feel like pen addict, like single handedly saved them. At least it's what it seems like. They. They have so many like limited editions that they've done through them. And then, you know, Brett has, and I think Mike too, just have so many retro 51s.
Have you seen the glow in the dark ones? No.
Oh my gosh.
I just went on their website. They have one where the. The entire barrel glows in the dark.
Wow.
Dang.
They have one a long time ago that was made of actual postage stamps and then it had the clear epoxy on it that I always wanted to get and just never did.
That's really cool.
I'd love to track down. But yeah, I have never had one of their pens. I have one of their mechanical pencils. But it's such a nice pen. I kind of kicking myself for not buying one for the last 20 years. So Evan sent me this after I Sent him a book, so this was a gift. So thank you very much, Evan. I am seriously loving and pimping this pen all over.
Well, I don't want one unless I can have the Special edition numbered 4 2, 0. Yeah.
Nice.
Is that the area code in Indiana? Oh, never mind.
Jesus,
I've never looked so innocent in my life.
What am I consuming? Yeah, so Johnny mentioned this, but I'll mention it, too. So since the last time we recorded, I have almost caught up with All Creatures Great and Small. They're in there. This new. The remake is in its second season, and there's really not that many episodes. They're doing, like, pretty typical BBC seasons where there's seven or eight episodes per season. But I am almost caught up. And I think we talked about it a little bit last time, Johnny, but like we were just saying beforehand, it fills the same sort of, like, void that, like, the Durrells and Corfu fill. Right. Like, it's very beautiful, sort of like landscapes, and they're just sort of really just, like, pleasing characters. And they, like, the plots aren't super complicated, the conflict and the drama is not super complicated. There's some just hijinks that happen. It's a. Just a good show. It's basically about a. A rural Yorker. It's the river.
I had to throw that in there. Sorry. Deep cut.
Rural Juror.
The rural Juror.
The rural. A rural Yorkshire veterinary practice. And a guy, James Harriet, who has written a bunch of books, like, memoir, I think, maybe some fiction, too, kind of about. This is from Glasgow, and he goes to join this practice. And, you know, sometimes they have family pets come into the practice. Sometimes they go to the farm and take care of horses. Like, it's all. All over the place. But just a really good show. Yeah, it's just very relaxing.
There are some scenes where I'm like, is this some kind of magic cgi or is his hand really in that horse's butt?
Well, because I didn't realize this short. Shortly after they started filming, the UK changed law on how you can like to film with animals. So all of the, like, scenes where there's, like, the backside of a horse that's all a model. Like, it's all fake.
Just two guys. Two guys in a costume.
Yeah, he doesn't, you know, shove his hand all the way up there and
realize he's the greatest actor ever, that he's not puking all over himself.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing, yet it's a good show.
Oh, man, the outtakes of that episode were crazy.
Can you believe everybody else started puking? The horse started puking. It was terrible.
What do they call that?
Chain puke reaction.
Yeah, that. Yeah, forget.
Nevermind.
We don't need to talk about that.
Barf.
NATO so been watching that. That's really good. Moving on. There's another show on HBO Max that just started called Somebody Somewhere and have either of you seen that?
No, I haven't.
It takes place in a like small, not rural, a small town in Kansas. And it is just the most. They just really capture just like small Midwestern town kind of like desolation really well. There's like drive through coffee shops and they just work in these buildings that are just like new and devoid of personality and these little houses and there's people who just look like somebody you would find in a town. And like 8th largest town in Canada in Kansas. It's just a very, I feel very accurate sort of portrayal of midwestern small town life in a just a really, just cool way. Right. Like they have. It's this woman, she's like kind of grieving the death of her sister. But she also finds like a community of just like people who don't fit in to this town yet. Just really good so far. It's very quiet and it's. I can't remember her real name but Hannah Bross, I think she's a comedian. She. She created it and stars in it. It's really great. And last thing I'll mention, there's this book that I was I think the Internet recommended to me. It's called A Lush and Seething Hell, which is a great title. It is two novella length stories compiled into a book that's kind of like gothic horror, but it's not, it's not like horror. It involves like some scary scenes and involves like some like dealing with the devil and stuff. But it's just a very.
Is that the like marketing tagline of the state of Florida?
I believe so. Lush and seething hell. Come on down to Orlando Hang out in a lush and seething hell. We don't have Covid. We are covered. Sorry to any of our listeners who
like my parents live there so I'll tell them that I insulted their home state.
My sister lives there and I. Yeah, there's one story that's about. It takes place in Spain and it's about this, this like famous poet from. From South America in mid century and escaped a like fictional authoritarian as like rule. There's this other story which was amazing and I think my favorite which was, like, this guy who works for the Library of Congress, and he is. He works in, like, the folk music section, and he is dispatched to go collect the recordings from this, like, Library of Congress collector from the 30s who, like. And so it. It's a story sort of like in present day and, like, through journal entries, and it's just really good. Has a lot of, like, interesting folk music, I think, Tim, you would really like.
It sounds good.
Yeah.
I wrote down. I just wrote down the title of this book because it also has one of my favorite words, which is Seething Novella. Oh, yeah, Novellas. I love novellas.
The second one, I feel like almost could be just, like a short novel, but it's. Yeah, they're both. They're both very good. All right, so that is. That wraps up Tools of the Trade.
Oh, I. You reminded me of something that I forgot to mention. Have you.
Yeah.
When you were talking about that show on Amazon, have either of you watched as we see it? Okay, well, we'll talk about another time, I guess, but. Because I've only seen one episode, and I was just curious because I probably have more to say on it later on, but it is the. It's the new show from the guy, Jason Catams, I think is his name, who created Parenthood, and it's on. It's on Amazon prime. And it's the story of three adults living with spectrum Autism Spectrum disorder who live together, and they have a sort of caretaker who lives with them. They're all coming from three very different situations. Two guys and a girl who live. They're on their mid-20s. It's called as we See It. And Jane and I watched episode one the other day, and it was. It was amazing. It was very good. It was very. It was, like, really heavy in parts of it. I mean, it's very real, but also heartwarming in some ways and sort of, like, challenges you and, you know, you're seeing some things that you don't expect to see. I. We really loved it, but I only saw the one episode, so I don't say too much about it, but, gosh, it was good. Good pilot.
Yeah. Check that out. All right. Fresh points, Tim. The meme mama. Do you want to. Do you want to start off with. Start us off on fresh points?
Oh, yes. Me man.
The meme man.
I gotta put that as my, like, Twitter.
It's like one of those weird. Those weird. Just, like, you know how, like, some grandparents, like, don't want to be. They want to be called, like, Meemaw. Or whatever, just call me ma'. Am.
Yeah, me ma'. Am. Just mumble a bunch of M's at me.
Yeah.
And it'll. Yeah. So I, I don't have a whole lot to talk about this week, but I also wanted to put out a. I guess a challenge or an invitation that I just was having a lot of fun turning our Instagram account into a pencil meme factory and, and creating some humor out. Like, I just. That's one of the best things about the. The meme world is just that you can make these really specialized pieces of humor that only the people who need to understand it will understand it. So if anybody out there wants to create some pencil related memes and want to send them to us either through our Twitter account or my Twitter account or to any of us, email, whatever, send them to us and we will give you credit. And we might put it on the, put it on the Instagram just to spread some laughs. But I was having so much fun and Andy, I feel like I got this ball rolling, but you're better at
it than I am. I am not better at it than you are. But I definitely have been enjoying figuring out too. I. Yeah. I never realized, like, why wouldn't we do something like this? It's fun. We've. I feel like we've gotten some really good engagement.
Yeah.
It is just.
It's fun and it's easy and it's just. I'm not easy, but I just mean like easy to take in.
Right.
Just to put some. Something out there.
My.
I think my personal favorite so far was your Anakin and Padme. I love using wopex because they're made out of wood. But they're ecologically friendly. Right? But they're ecologically friendly.
Right.
That was good. So it's one of those things. It's like it's only going to be funny to people who listen to the show and that's fun.
I was pretty Wopex. One is not funny.
It was terrible.
I was particularly proud of the, the General Musgrave and Dixon one.
That one was great. That was a great.
That one made me so happy. So. But yeah. So anybody who wants to. To join in the fun, let us know and. And we will. Yeah.
I mean I, I especially love that we got Nicole Dogler to weigh in on that one.
Yeah. She was like, I have sort of
like brand ambassador of Musgrave right now.
And I even made the specific choice to put Musgrave in the middle so that they could be the one glaring to the side. Who's this? What are you doing over there, man? Come on, get together. But that's all I got. That's all I got. Just trying to make some pencil laughs, create some pencil humor.
Doing it for the memes.
Yeah, I'm just in it for the memes, boys.
Johnny, do you have any.
All I got.
Johnny, do you have any?
So, well, speaking of Ticonderoga, they might go out of business as the SAT will no longer be taken in pencil.
Did you see that? That Onion article?
Yeah, that's how I thought of it.
What was the headline again?
We should. Oh, I should look that up on you.
Yeah.
Keep.
Keep talking, Johnny. We'll find it.
The.
The first few pages of the pen post that come out tomorrow are like a big long rant about SATs. Conclusion of who cares about the SAT? Why is this news?
Here's the Onion article. It's over. It's all over. Screams Ticonderoga CEO dousing office and gasoline after announcement sat.
Meanwhile, the head of their everything is not in the United States anymore.
They do maintain some sort of corporate office in Florida, which, like, so I'm sure they're currently experienced experiencing the lush and see the gal that is, you know, the SATs.
Yeah. And it's not for another few years. And also, who the hell. There are 1800 schools that don't want SAT scores. That's a lot. My kids take standardized tests on computers already. So I was very surprised to hear that the SAT still was in pencil.
Yeah.
Christ, I took the GRE 20 years ago and I used a computer the whole time we had scratch paper.
I give the SAT or I give the act. Every year we do it on paper. So we. They haven't made an announcement about ACT
yet, but yeah, it's the competition. Yeah.
When I said that the Ticonderoga corporate office was in Florida, did you say. Of course it is? Maybe.
Where did they have their factory? Was it Missouri? Like the last factory before they packed
up in New Jersey?
That was the original one.
Oh, okay. Oh, the last factory.
And they had. They were on that show like Made in the usa while they knew damn well that they were moving. They were already like packing. Like, you guys suck. But in other frustrating meme stands, boys. So I mentioned last time that I wasn't going to use Etsy for subscriptions. And after many hours of me cussing at my computer, I decided to use Etsy. And man, subscriptions are hard to manage if you have ADHD and also are very lazy. But I think I'VE set things up so that it won't be torture anymore after this month. So that's good. And thank you to everybody who subscribed because I got to make lots of notebooks which actually made everything better because that's fun.
Yeah.
So. Yeah. And one last shameless plug Pencil revolution number 25 is out.
Yay.
And now it's quarter sheet, which has been four fun, but like it got really long.
What's the dimensions of quarter sheet?
5 and a half by 4ish.
Okay.
I trim them off so it's a little over four.
Yeah. That's a good size.
It's intimate.
Yeah.
But also you can still fit a lot in there and it's pretty thick, which makes it feel like this feels like a little book.
Nice.
So, yeah, that's enough. Plug in my own stuff. What.
What's going on here?
You're asking?
I don't know. You tell me.
Hey, Andy, you.
I saw that you have done some woodworking on your fence.
Yes.
Which is pencil. That's pencil adjacent.
Yeah, it's sort of. Sure.
You use the pencil to market.
I've never considered like what to do when the fence is, I guess owned or maintained by the neighbor. Like it's one of those situations where if you want to fix a loose slat or something, it's. It's on the other side of the fence. And he is rarely at home, let alone goes in the backyard. So I had a. Just a loose slat and I wanted to prevent my cat from escaping when he goes in the backyard. So I just took a little like brace and just. Just screwed it in.
It's.
It's my. It's the extent of my like handyman skills, but that's about it. I. So I made a decision on bookshelves and I bought three very large bookshelves from Inside Weather, which are. I think that they're going to be big enough to hold books and zines and all of the various bins full of pencils that I have. Yeah, definitely looking forward to that.
Awesome. Do you have pictures?
I will. Well, they're not in yet. I'm not going to get them till later. But I'll post some links in the show notes to the shelves that I'm looking at. Looking forward to that last thing. I was going to ask you two for some recommendations. So I'm going to be going back after since quarantine started to having some in person workshops later this spring if all goes according to plan. And for our workshops. Michael and I used to Buy pencils from CW Pencils. That would say writing is designing on them. Can't do that anymore. Any recommendations for where I can get some stamp pencils?
Yeah, Jacob Cecil got a stamper. Remember when we were at the pen show, he brought us some pencils.
Looking at one of those the other day.
Episode 135 pencils. Yeah. Oh, that's right.
And no, the.
What did they say? Be more 2020. Is that what it said? Yeah, those are cool.
And they had our names on them. Yeah, they looked really good. Yeah, they weren't a nice, like, natural finished Musgrave pencil.
Yeah, I'll reach out to them. I know Musgrave, their website. They have a little customize your own pencil engine too. So they have a few various fonts and a bunch of different colors. But yeah, I'll drop him a line and see. See if he's selling them at all. Because I. Yeah, I find myself in need of a personalized stamp pencil and said CW pencils used to be able to get me like a hundred of them within a week, which is real nice. But not right now. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. Cool. So, Jacob, I know pencils.com and yeah, Musgrave also has them. Don't know about the quality or price or like what kind of turnaround time. Yeah, turnaround time. But check those out.
I mean, there's always, I guess, Etsy.
It's true. Yeah.
I think a lot of people just probably have the same stampers and the same blank Musgrave pencils. Who's going to do a really good straight job. Yeah, the ones from CW were always really nicely done. The ones that Jacob gave us were like super straight.
Yeah, yeah, I forgot. I forgot to use those. Those are really good. Cool. That is it. For. For my fresh points, you can probably get in the main topic. I. We were talking about what to talk about this week and I realized that my planning systems just kind of throughout the year have not really changed significantly in the last few years and kind of to like my detriment because I would not say I'm the most organized person in the world. So a little bit I want to hear about what you currently do to stay organized. Stay. Stay Zen. Just kind of keep track of things and then kind of get into a discussion about is that working for you? Are you thinking about trying something different? You know, what else is out there, that kind of thing. Does that sound good, guys? Yeah. Tim, how do you plan? How do you stay organized?
Johnny, you want to go? No, I'm trying And I talked about it a little bit on the last episode and so I could just kind of reiterate what I was talking about, which is bullet journaling. And I have kind of come up with my own system that seems to be working as far as keeping me organized on a day to day basis, which is doing it in a pocket notebook.
Yeah, Johnny.
Keep a pocket notebook that. Yeah.
Speaking of bullet journaling, do you want to sing this part that you put in here, Johnny?
Oh.
Or did you put that in there too? Oh, very good.
I did, yeah. Yeah. That was my. One of the nerdier jokes that I've made in my household.
It's very good.
My life. My daughter Lila was. Is obsessed with the soundtrack for Encanto and she was listening to that song we don't talk about Bruno. And I just was walking down the hallway and said, we don't talk about Boo.
Joe, what did you say?
I was like, don't worry about it.
That's perfect.
Don't worry about it. So, yeah, so I'm doing this pocket bullet journal. It's totally not precious. I'm not worried about it being this little artifact at the end that has all the cute little things that I see on, you know, Instagram of people's beautiful little bullet journals and all that stuff, because I never can keep up with that. I'm too ADD for that. But that's how I do that. And that keeps me organized on a day to day basis. And then the other thing that I'm making a, like a really special effort to do this year is I'm going back to morning pages and trying to make. Trying to be really strict about doing it every single day. So I've been trying to wake up early every day because I've just noticed that while I struggle to stay organized sometimes one of the reasons that days tend to get all right, I don't know that I tend to get anxious in a day is that if I don't have that sort of creative release at any point throughout the day. And Bullet, or sorry, Morning pages has just proven to be one of those amazing releases for my brain just to kind of clear the cobwebs in the morning when I wake up. So I'm trying to do that. I can't. I'm having trouble figuring out how to do it. To the extent that Julia Cameron talks about. She talks about writing three pages of kind of unfiltered self or, sorry, unfiltered stream of consciousness writing. It's been hard to find that kind of Time. But I usually will get a couple pages in 15 to 20 minutes of writing.
I've only read one instance of what she. Where she said what she means by page.
Yeah, I've always wondered about this. What'd she say?
Forever? I'm like, what the hell? Oh, eight and a half by 11. But she doesn't say lined, unlined. How big are the lines? Don't be so damn pedantic. Just be like, write a bunch every day.
Yeah, this. It should just be a timed thing. Like, just write constantly for a certain amount of time, which is usually what I end up doing. Like 15 to 20 minutes.
Yeah.
And I'm using. I opened a new Leuchtturm notebook, a lined one, which I'm getting used to. It's. The lining on that notebook is smaller than I'm accustomed to. I just haven't used line notebooks a lot either. But it's going well. So if I can write two pages in there, it's a lot.
Good. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm feeling good. Turquoise blue. I actually found it on clearance at our local Barnes and Noble a while back and stumbled across it.
Even better.
Yeah, I love it. It's real bright turquoise. So, yeah, that's really all. To start this out, I. I'm trying to rededicate myself to doing morning pages to kind of make my brain a little more like, creatively alive as I go through the day so that I'm not. Because I. I have this. That happens to me personally, where I go through a day and I. My. My brain. The back of my brain is just kind of always feeling frustrated about not having time to get stuff onto paper and just be creative and write whatever's on my mind. And that really helps. And it also helps me, like, throughout the day, I'll notice that when I have gaps of time around lunchtime or whatever and I can get out a notebook, I'm much more likely to do something creative rather than just try to like. Like ramble in a journal for 20 minutes in the middle of the day. So if I can get all that clutter out of my head in the morning, then it makes the rest of the day a little more productive, a little more creative, and then I'll be. Yeah. Carrying around my pocket bujo to keep track of things. The unspoken thing here is that, of course, I also use Google Calendar, so, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I'll be.
Do what you got.
Yeah, I got that going because I can combine my work calendar and my home calendar and whatever. Nobody wants to hear that. You guys know what Google Calendar is? So that's me. So.
So I had been before this year doing a sort of bullet journal morning pages hybrid where I wrote like 98% of anything I'm going to write all day, you know, before the sun comes up. But, you know, that's not always productive. And I wanted to switch out and separate my bullet journal and regular journal this year. And as I'm going, well, because I keep losing my bullet journal and if I don't lose it, I'm still not looking at it. So I don't know what purpose it's serving aside from having lists of things I haven't done. But having a regular journal has been good because like Tim said, I don't know, jump start in the day already trying to be creative and, oh, I'm gonna write that down and not be too lazy to write it down because I'll forget it. She was just sort of like breaking the seal of putting some inker graphite on paper before the sun comes up. But I'm, I'm flirting with the idea of abandoning my bullet journal and switching back to a, like, planner. I have one of those write notepads ones that's, I guess it's a landscape, seven by ten, something like that. You know, it's blue, it's really pretty, which is why I haven't written it yet. But that looks, that seems like a good thing to do because doing like bookbinding and Etsy and stuff. Like, there's actually a lot of like nitpicky, tiny things I have to do and they have to be done in a certain order. And I'm really not doing a good job of staying like, on top of things. And then I get stressed out because I'm like, oh, God, there's other stuff I need to do, but I'm not doing it. And then, you know, if you don't bullet journal in the morning, it sounds like you have 50 things to do when really you have seven.
Yeah.
You just need to do those things. So I'm not having a good planning experience this year. But tomorrow is February 1st, so we'll try something new.
New month, new you.
Yeah. And I, I also use Google Calendar if it's something that involves other people so I don't forget to show up. I use Google Calendar.
Yeah.
Even for like coffee dates. Hey, we're going to meet at this place, this time. Now I will get several reminders so that I show up.
Yeah. So I don't know. I guess I'm in kind of the same page. I actually, since, since quarantine started, I like working from home. I have barely used pocket notebooks. Like I'm never out in the world really, like relatively speaking. I always have one in my bag with me in case I need it. But I think almost all of my life is here within my like a five notebook. So the thing that I talked a little bit about this before, but I've really landed on is I have just a weekly spread where I have kind of weekly to dos and I can add things and then kind of check them off. And I, I think that the thing that's worked best for me is I use this in conjunction with a to do list on, on my computer. There's a Mac one called Things. And I tend to just sort of like capture into my notebook. I'll just write things down as I think of them or as I bring them over from last week or as things come up and I'll kind of in the end of the day take them all and put them into things. That way I can set like reminders and I can set deadlines and I can kind of arrange them as needed, which I think is the advantage of something like that over paper. And then I tend to just like every day just try to pick out the two or three or four or whatever things that I think I can accomplish that day or that I want to try to. And then I'll kind of break them back out, then put them back into the journal. Which like, may not be the like best system, but it's kind of the works, the best for my brain and like breaking things down into chunks. Right. Like it's, it's. I'm trying to follow a similar philosophy to getting things done or you know, one of those kind of methods where I'm just using one thing to capture everything to dump into. You know, I can just take a big dump into my notebook and then I try to pull them back out, little bites sized so I can just, you know, bite into the, the dump. So, so yeah, that, that's kind of, I think mostly what I use. And I also use the same notebook for taking notes and trying to capture some thoughts as I have them. I've been trying to use it to capture little like momentos and things that's happening. I use it for capturing timestamps and notes and fresh points for, you know, for this, this podcast, try to kind of record that stuff in here. So yeah, right. So right now I'm just using this like this one single notebook for almost Everything. For better or for worse. But I def. Yeah, I definitely. I mean, I don't use Google Calendar at work. We. It's Adobe's kind of like a full on committed to like Outlook, which doesn't play super well with Google Cal. At least not ours. Which is unfortunate. But I definitely. I would love to go back to being able to use a planner, but I just have my. I have so many meetings and my schedule is not sort of like under my complete control, so I feel like there would just be. I'd be constantly just sort of trying to reconcile, you know, you know, paper with my online calendar and vice versa.
I just, I have to admit that I literally don't understand how people use paper calendars. I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable enough with myself to admit that. Yeah, like, when people talk about using paper calendars, I'm like, I have no idea how you do this. I'm a, I'm a podcast, a stationary podcaster, and I have no clue how that could possibly work for anyone because I, it would just. I would spend half my day trying to make sure that it was keeping up with all the crap coming through my email and.
Yeah, all that.
Yeah, I've tried to do it so many times. I've tried all kinds of different formats of journals. Some of them I liked temporarily, but I had just so much trouble like, keeping everything reconciled and it just drove me crazy. And I'm fascinated by people who can actually pull this stuff off.
Yeah.
So I'm the opposite. I can't do online calendars exclusively. I hate it so much. Yeah, no good reason. Because, you know, having an Android phone in your pocket all the time, it's so easy to put something in there.
Yeah.
I mean, part of it I think could be just like, has to do with like, jobs or like how many other people are. Have the ability or have to put time on your calendar. That's a big thing.
Yeah, I got a lot of flack for that when I used to have a career because I, I didn't use my Outlook calendar. Like, oh, well, you didn't block this out. Like, that's none of your damn business. My meeting. Yeah, but that doesn't fly, man.
Yeah. Yeah. When I, in my. When I worked at a nonprofit, I had relatively little meetings and I just lived and died by my calendar because I just didn't have to worry about people just like, trying to book time with me or me trying to book time with others. We did most of our, like, meeting scheduling through. Through Email and yeah, I could just kind of easily write it down. So. Yeah, I. I get it. I just realized that where the situation I'm in right now, I just. There's no way I could not do that. Yeah, I don't know. So. So how. Is there anything that you especially kind of like for 2022 or just seeing what others are using? Is there anything that you like, either of you wish you could be doing differently but can't for some reason or another?
I have one that I. I wouldn't say that I can't. I just haven't pulled the trigger on. It is that I have been for multiple years. I've been pretty intrigued and this actually, this has nothing to do with organizing, but it's related that I've been intrigued for years about the five year journal. Is that what it's called or what is it called?
Oh yeah. Huh.
Yeah, that, that idea. They're like a couple sentences a day for. For the entire year. That's something that I'm really intrigued by and would love to do that so that I can look back on it and. And see a year at a glance like that.
I think that's a really. It's like time hop, but for your, you know, paper. Yeah.
It's not affecting your Amazon recommendations.
Exactly.
I did one of those for five years and it was kind of cool. But then also I never looked at it again because you know, for four years you're looking at that one entry and then for three years the next entry you're like, man, I'm tired of this. February is always so boring. Like you lead an unexciting life, man.
In. In that same respect I. Those little standard memorandum notebooks. That word notebooks makes I feel like it's a similar thing. It's just one year at a time. Just like tiny little notebook that gives you like three tiny lines to just write something quick. And at one point I was going to try to use that as like a five year journal, but a one year journal just to just kind of record little things. And I just realized how wildly inconsistent I am. There's just no way that I can stick with that. And it seems like something like that, especially particularly with the five year journal. If you're not going to stick with it, it's just like defeats the purpose.
Oh yeah. And is it paper blanks or charm? One of them does a 10 year. I think it's paper.
Oh geez. See having. I feel like by year eight that thing is going to be in tatters.
I'm gonna look this up. I wonder if they still make it.
Yeah, I actually remember I even purchased a really beautiful Hobonichi five year journal, and it was just gorgeous. And yeah, even with something like that, I just couldn't. Yeah.
Yeah. I made one this year to do a little five year journal, but I didn't start it, so. Oops. And then I found it later and I was like, what I make this for?
Oh, yeah.
So, yeah, no dice. Yeah. Paper planks doesn't make them anymore. Believe it or not, they weren't big sellers.
Yeah. Yeah. I can see how that'd be, like, so much fun if I could stick with it and just, you know, eight, nine years down the line, just be like, oh, yeah, what was I doing? How. What was I thinking about all that time ago and after the pandemic started and I. Because every day I was trying to make a little spread where I was just, like, capturing how I was feeling about it and capturing just, like, the number of, like, COVID deaths and cases in the world and in the US And I just wanted. I don't want to remember how I was feeling during the beginning of this. I and everybody else were just collectively freaked out. And of course, now nobody's freaked out, which is the problem.
Yep.
Any other, like, systems or things that people use that just, like, really intrigue you, that just. You haven't been able to pick up or get started on?
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the artistic stuff that people do I admire very much, but I don't seem to have the talent or dedication.
What kind of artistic stuff?
Some people do quote, unquote, spreads in their bullet journal, like seasonal.
And lots of that stuff makes me mad.
Mild liner and stuff. Very pretty.
Definitely don't have a demanding job or kids. That was mean. They probably do. They're just better at it than me. I just. But that's. Whenever I see that, I'm like, how in the world do you do. Like, how do you manage to make that happen? It's beautiful.
Yeah. For me, the big one that I just can't pick up is. I think I've talked about it here before, but the Plotter system, which is the traveler's notebook company, people started like, a new sub brand called Plottr, and it's been around in Japan for a long time, but it just recently came to the US And I love the system. I think the little, like, inserts are really cool and, like, they're very prescriptive and for the right person, that would be great. But I Just realized I don't think that person is me. I. It's too prescriptive. It's too precious, I guess. I. I think the. Yeah, I think just everything about it is just really beautiful, and it's just. I can't.
It.
To me, it just feels like the pressure is too great to have a very tidy, like, system and set of goals and notes and day and just everything is. Everything in my life is way too messy for that. And so I just can't get over what's probably just a mental hurdle in. In using the plotter stuff. But I have a whole little, like, little plotter journal system here that the folks who run it gave me during the San Francisco pen show last or the. This past year. And I even talked to April, who is the. The marketing outreach person in charge of it. And, yeah, I've been. I'm just trying to get around my own hangups with it, I guess. So. Yeah. But it's really cool, though, and I. I feel like people who, like, respond well to that sort of thing just could go really all out because also that would be good for people who just make, like you said, Johnny, spreads like that paper is really great for trying out, like, your inks. And you can do all sorts of fun layouts and just write real small and do. Do little illustrations like doodles in this. The. The margins. You can make a real, real good spread on that. Yeah, so that's. That's about all I had on my just kind of list of stuff to talk about. Any. Anybody else want to talk about planning in 2022?
Oh, man. I mean, I think if a lot of our trouble, or at least my trouble is, you know, the unpredictability of every day right now.
Yeah, I was gonna say 2020 and 2021 taught us anything.
Yeah. Don't plan too much.
Don't plan too much.
And the Bullet Journal, sort of like online community thing that you have to pay to play with, they have launched, like, Bullet Journal. U. Like, you can take classes that you have to pay for how to use your bullet journal. So, I mean, I feel like this would be the Bullet Journal's heyday when. What's going on? Don't have to throw this away. I can use it for something else.
Yeah, Writer Carol is really getting his money's worth out of it.
Good for him.
Yeah, good for him. All right, well, anything else to add, or should we wrap it up and call this a short one?
Sure.
Yeah, I think we're good.
Cool.
Johnny, where can people find you on the Internets.
You can find me@pencilrevolution.com on social media at Pensolution and on Etsy@pencil revolution.etsy.com Nice.
Tim, how about you?
You can find me on Instagram @timothywassum, on Twitter @timwassom and dank memes at Erasable podcast on Instagram.
Tim, how do people find your find your only fans? Not telling. Okay, you'll just have to figure out for that for yourself.
Yeah, you got to bend mommy's money even to get the invite.
Exactly. We don't talk about Tim's only fans.
The first rule of Tim's only fans. Never mind.
First rule is there isn't one.
And I am Andy. I am@woodclinch.com at Andy WTF and on Twitter and Facebook as wellfley. So yeah, this is the Erasable podcast. You can find find more at erasable us. This episode is episode 176 and we'll have a transcript eventually and a recording and show notes at erasable us/176. We're on. We have a Facebook group that is one of the best places, one of the best online communities out there. It is facebook.comgroups/erasable. It's about 4000ish people strong and we're on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as at Erasable Podcast. And we are on Patreon if you want to support this podcast and get some extra content while you're at it, including a regular zine that we put out a some irregular recordings about pens with the Indelible podcast and other things.
Surprise. Sorry. Little kick coming soon.
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Is it 5 and 10?
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