still to come: meeting my kiddo at the bus stop, possibly shopping with a friend, dinner, family time…but not staying up too late, because I have to work tomorrow.

at the Nest: The pattern of barely cleaning unfortunately continues, and while we have many boxes unpacked, there are several sitting here and there downstairs and upstairs. BUT! Today the rest of the books made it to the shelves! And I have designs on some things from Target that have not yet been purchased…heheheh.

(Oh yeah – we bought a house. Lots of photos over on Instagram…and later on, when everything’s really arranged, I’ll take my husband’s fancy camera and get some good pictures for a blog post.)

in books: Just finished The New New Journalism, a collection of interviews with authors of literary nonfiction, including Jon Krakauer and Eric Schlosser. Takeaways: 1) Truth is relative. 2) Writing is hard. 3) Reporting involves persuasion techniques.

Also reading:

• The View from the Cheap Seats, by Neil Gaiman
• Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow (apparently, the one that inspired the musical)
• Rescuing Jesus, by Deborah Jian Lee (with our church)
• Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner — it was recommended on the “What Should I Read Next?” podcast, and so far I’m really enjoying it. I haven’t been reading much fiction of this type lately.

on the tv: not much…for the past month or two I’ve barely been watching anything, instead reading or puttering around on my phone (which usually means Instagram or reading blog posts or articles). But lately my husband and I have been watching Nurse Jackie together. We meant to watch The Big Short together last week but didn’t pan out, so moved it to tonight!

with the kiddo: visited a big antique store, “special drinks” at Starbucks – she always gets the strawberries and cream frappucino “with whipped cream!!” – and then the library, where she quickly picked out three books and a movie to check out, then spent almost an hour playing with blocks, or puzzles, or walking around taking photos of everything with my phone camera. I came over to check on her at one point, and she said “you can go back now” as soon as I walked up. She’s so confident, so completely herself, and it’s painfully beautiful to see because when did she get so big?! and there she is. She starts kindergarten in a month.

pondering: ways to make my mornings better, and how to get myself to start exercising regularly. I’ve been oversleeping nearly every morning for the past week or two, which means I have about 20 minutes to myself on mornings when I work. So I can choose either journaling/coffee/being still, or exercising. Clearly, the former has been winning hands down. But exercising is so important, so I need to figure that out.

enjoying: Starbucks’ vanilla sweet cream cold brew, the soothing color palette that greets me every time I walk into my bedroom, and watching my husband and kiddo play together.

Here’s how those mornings go:

1. Wake up. I have an alarm set for 7am on weekends, but sometimes I turn it off, and sometimes I wake up before that. I try to get up early lately, because if my child wakes up at the same time as I do, she fills the apartment with singing and questions and a constant stream of chatter, and much as I adore her, that can be a bit difficult for me to deal with first thing…
2. Make coffee in my Keurig, and head to my chair in the corner by the window. It’s my favorite place in the whole world…and also a bit of a cave, which I find quite interesting.
3. Do my morning pages, as described in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. This is a recent addition, and it’s a ritual that’s proved quite helpful so far – I look forward to it. This takes about 30 minutes.
4. Start drinking my coffee (usually after warming it up again…I’m terrible about that) and reading. The end table next to my chair is simply there to hold my books and my coffee. At any given time there are 4 to 6 books there, along with Bella Grace magazine, issues of Entertainment Weekly, and a couple of other books that I read more slowly. Oh, and my journal and my gratitude/happiness book. Right now Steve Jobs is the one I’m focusing on, and it’s quite fascinating.
5. Get kiddo breakfast when she asks, maybe make more coffee, and keep reading. Maybe get on my phone and putter around a bit, or text a friend or two.
6. Eventually, get up, do some useful things, decide to write a blog post about my mornings, and probably head back…

Nearly every morning, while sitting in my chair, I feel so much joy – for our little living room, for the view of rooftops and tree branches gilded by sun, for the perfect chair to curl up in, for the variety of coffee mugs, for my kiddo’s singing, for all the pieces that mean I am loved that come up as I write. Joy.

1. Self-care. For me, this looks like spending time reading, journaling, and exercising. I’m no good to others when I’m in a bad place mentally, and these three things help me stay out of that bad place. Reading comes naturally to me (I read 106 books last year, which surprised me), but journaling requires more focus, and exercise is a habit I’m trying to create.
2. Loved ones. I want to spend more quality time with my family, and see my closest friends regularly.
3. Work. 

In an attempt to set myself up for success (I know, why would I do that, right?!), I’ve kept my goals specific and the list short.

1. Run two 5Ks. This is partly to motivate myself to exercise, and partly because I ran one once before, felt accomplished for finishing (despite my terrible time, haha), and I’d like to do it again. I have picked out three possibilities, one in the spring and two in the winter.
2. Do a weekend away with my husband. We’ve been married for six years and have never done this.
3. Do four family adventures. It’s always wonderful when we go places as a family. I’d like to make that more structured and add some variety.
4. Complete a reading challenge. Specifically, Modern Mrs. Darcy’s 2016 Reading Challenge. The only book I haven’t yet picked out is one published in 2016…but since I am a librarian, I’m sure I’ll be able to find several candidates in the next couple of months without much effort!
5. Pay off our consumer debt. This is a family goal. Monthly payments on our debt make it even more difficult for us to do without my husband’s income, and that has been postponing his plan to go back to college. Once those payments are gone, we should have enough wiggle room that he can drastically reduce his hours, at least. Happily, we will be almost halfway to this goal by the end of this month.

Here’s what happened in my life in 2015…

• Basically got promoted to a supervisory position, and several months later received a raise for it!
• Took the lead on interviewing and hiring a new employee, whom I directly supervise.
• Attended two professional conferences on my own, one out of state.
• Coordinated a massive, challenging project at work, and watched as it was executed by the entire team so smoothly and much faster than I anticipated.
• Ran my first 5k.
• Drove both ways to a work meeting 30+ minutes away. Since I used to be terrified of driving on the highway, this is huge.
• Started individual counseling.
• Was diagnosed with a major depressive episode by my counselor.
• Went to see a psychiatrist and was prescribed medication.
• Started taking the medication and realized I’ve been living in a fog for most of my life.
• Experienced a worsening of depression, went back to the psychiatrist, had my med dose changed, and started feeling better again.
• Traveled to California for my grandfather’s memorial service, to Galveston for my best friend’s girls weekend, and to the Austin area twice and the Waco area once to spend time with my in-laws.
• Celebrated our fifth anniversary and my husband’s 25th birthday.
• Watched my preschooler get ever more articulate, opinionated, and individual.
• Spent many, many wonderful hours with various close friends, at home, in their homes, going out places… I’m so thankful for my People.
• Purchased a Halloween costume for the first time in my life, and wore it to a bar with friends!
• Watched various family members perform in musicals at the local community theatre!
• Prepared to watch my best friend get married!

It’s been an eventful year, to say the least, and a good one.

After some inquiry on Facebook, I’ve been prompted to finally do that Filofax for grad school post I’ve had in the back of my head for a while. Since this is purely about the function of my planner, I’m not including as many pictures as I might otherwise. Words work just as well.

I am now employed full time, as well as being a grad student and having a family. I need to write things down in order to keep track of things. So, my planner has to handle a lot! I use a personal sized Filofax, as it’s the perfect size to take with me everywhere and place in front of a laptop on a small coffee shop table. Also, one can hold it in one hand and write with the other, something I’ve found quite difficult with larger ring-bound planners. I use Franklin Covey page per day inserts. The fact that they stick out of the Filofax doesn’t bother me. Filofax notepaper and to-do sheets make up the rest of my pages, along with dividers. I happen to be using ones I made out of scrap paper I was given.

First, my sections: Notes, Projects, Actions, Learn, Info, and a blank tab. I am using a GTD type set-up.

Notes is where I write random bits of information before I decide what to do with them. It’s also where I write non-day-specific information which I only need temporarily. I keep extra notepaper and to-do sheets behind this divider as well.

Projects begins with two project lists. If I have any multi-step actions I need to do which are not related to school, they go on one of these lists. “Me” is for projects which I can do independently, while “Others” is for projects which involve others. Both of these lists are on Filofax to-do paper, but you could just as easily use plain lined paper. Per GTD, the projects list is actually a list of *outcomes*. For example, I have “arrange babysitters for chats” as a project, *not* “chat babysitters.” It took me a while to understand this. If the *outcome* is listed, I am prompted to think of the “next action” just by reading what I’ve got listed and thinking for 2 seconds. If I have something more generic, it doesn’t work. After the project lists are notes pages with any information or lists that go along with any of the projects. One project has its own page, while others share a page. At the end of this section is my Someday list, on notepaper. This entire section is only 6 sheets of paper.

Actions contains 8 sheets of to-do paper which make up seven categorized “next actions” lists. If something needs to be done, but doesn’t have a date attached to it, it goes on one of these lists. My categories are Home, Computer (2 sheets), Materials (e.g. if I want to journal something it goes on this list), Talk to Husband About, Agendas (for those I know), Contact (for businesses and such), and Errands. I also keep my Waiting For list on a post-it on the back side of the divider.

Learn is the big one, and here’s where the pictures come in! This is where all my grad school information is kept, including assignments.

First I have the major assignments listed chronologically.

Then my minor assignments, with due dates noted, in the order in which I find out about them.

Then my reading lists — one for computer and one for books.

After that, I have a page with my class information and professor contact information for the current semester. This is followed by page(s) for each class, with assignment information and notes on how the class works.

After that, I have the page I used to plan out which courses to take when. On the reverse side I have my degree plan, along with my GPA for the semesters I’ve completed. Then some pages with school-related notes. At the end of the section, I have cheat sheets for the citation methods I’ve had to use.

This section is 14 sheets.

My Info tab also contains 14 sheets at the moment. I have a list of current coupons/deals/gift cards, a to-buy list, gift ideas, a sheet with one car’s maintenance and events record on one side and the other car’s on the other, a sheet recording my daughter’s health info, our budget plan (we use a software called YNAB to keep track of spending and our budget in practice, but this is what I use when I budget every month to remind myself of our goals), a username/password list for some of our bill websites which I only use once a month, my goals, my health, and various other notes. Right now I have a sheet for “Filofax Wisdom” for example.

My blank tab currently has my list of books to check out from the library, categorized by fiction, non-fiction, Christian, and “action” (e.g. dieting books). I keep this in here because I work at a library!

Then comes my calendar. I use Franklin Covey page per day inserts, which come with monthly tabs. (I picked less full days so that I didn’t have to block things out — my days and months end up far fuller than this!)

I do color code. Bright blue is for school assignments and notes, while red is used for deadlines (both for big school assignments and for important non-school-related things). Oriental blue is for work, green is for my husband’s schedule and family events, and purple is used for special events, travel, and birthdays. Black is the default and is used for everything else. 

The monthly calendar gets monthly notes, odd work hours, due dates, and special things (e.g. dinner with friends, concerts, birthdays). Anything else just goes on the dailies.

I use my daily pages in a specific way. Appointments go on the appointment schedule. The notes area is used for day-specific information (e.g. due dates, confirmation numbers, addresses) and occasionally for recording something that happened that day. I put day-specific to-dos (pay bills, do homework) starting at the top and going down. Once the day arrives, if I have things I’d *like* to do that day, I put those on the list starting at the bottom and going up. I don’t use the priority box. Instead, I start the first line of a to-do there, and the second line where the to-do is “supposed” to start. Throughout the day, I will have to refer to my action lists and my school lists to get things done. That’s how I make the page per day work. If I needed to have everything in front of me, I would use the 2 pages per day.

So, there’s my set-up. I hope it’s helpful for students trying to figure out what they need!

Then I received the Kate Spade inserts for 2013 along with the wine Holborn I purchased:

Now I’m not certain which one to use. Kate Spade has a monthly planner and gorgeous two-page pretty picture type things before the months. BN has monthly “events pages”. I also set up the BN with color coding, while the Kate Spade I kept black and white. At this point I’m leaning towards Kate Spade. What do you all think?

(This is assuming that a busy schedule doesn’t drive me back to my FC 2ppd or FF ppd of course.)

Well, I did it (and then some). That’s one goal which WAS accomplished this year. It’s a small thing, and comparatively easy (I love to read!), but still. It’s an accomplishment.

Here are the 52 books, in order of completion. These were all finished in 2012, but not at a rate of one a week! Rather, I’d go weeks without finishing one and then finish four in a week, things like that. In reviewing this list, I’ve noticed that I read a fair amount of Christian non-fiction and teen fiction.

1. The Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
2. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
3. The Me I Want To Be, John Ortberg
4. Reading The Bible Again For The First Time, Marcus J. Borg
5. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
6. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
7. The Bible Jesus Read, Philip Yancey
8. The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
9. When She Woke, Hillary Jordan
10. A Praying Life, Paul E. iller
11. Thinking Straight In A Crooked World, Gary DeMar
12. Lit! Tony Reinke
13. The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer
14. Time Of My Life, Allison Winn Scotch
15. Misquoting Truth, Timothy Paul Jones
16. The House At Riverton, Kate Morton
17. In Our Control, Laura Eldridge
18. One Day, David Nicholls
19. Austenland, Shannon Hale
20. If God Is Good, Randy Alcorn
21. Matched, Allie Condie
22. Crossed, Allie Condie
23. Making It All Work, David Allen
24. One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
25. Love, Loneliness, Abuse, and Murder, Jim B. Pulley
26. Spousonomics, Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
27. Uninsured in America, Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle
28. Radical, David Platt
29. A Feast For Crows, George R. R. Martin
30. Free For All, Don Borchert
31. The Way In, Rita D. Jacobs
32. The Reading Group, Elizabeth Noble
33. Insurgent, Veronica Roth
34. Not A Fan, Kyle Idleman
35. Sink Reflections, Marla Cilley
36. The Irresistable Revolution, Shane Claiborne
37. The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren
38. Confessions of a Prayer Slacker, Diane Moody
39. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
40. Gossip Girl, Cecily von Ziegesar
41. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
42. Love Wins, Rob Bell
43. The Pledge, Kimberly Derting
44. Article 5, Kristen Simmons
45. Birthmarked, Caragh M. O’Brien
46. Erasing Hell, Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle
47. The Selection, Kiera Cass
48. Bloodhound, Tamora Pierce
49. Mastiff, Tamora Pierce
50. Prized, Caragh M. O’Brien
51. Promised, Caragh M. O’Brien
52. A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans
53. Reached, Allie Condie
54. Ruby Red, Kerstin Gier
55. Letters From A Skeptic, Dr. Gregory Boyd and Edward Boyd

I’m talking about a $9.99 vinyl planner from Barnes and Noble.

It’s really quite sad that this planner has better rings than my Finchley.

I actually bought this planner for the calendar pages – it’s a weekly layout, and it’s pretty. The more staid planner pages available in a refill pack in a separate part of the store were too staid and the structure didn’t fit what I liked very well. Plus, my new planner came with stickers, a notepad, and a bookmark, too. It’s fun and girly, it’s true…We’ll see how the layout works for me.

Sadly, these don’t appear to be available online currently – except through resellers charging premium prices. Ugh.

I’ll post pictures in another entry later on, as it’s late and I don’t feel like doing all the uploading right now…

I’ve kept the same set-up since August or so, when school started. I work part-time, take a full load of grad school classes, and I am married with a toddler. Before too long I was clinging to my Filofax like a life raft. I was afraid to tweak my set-up or change calendar pages in case I lost information along the way! I have to say, though, that this set-up did work well. I rarely missed anything. I did change up how I kept track of school assignments, but I will be doing an All-Stars post on that later on.

This is my personal brown Holborn. It has been serving me well since August, when I bought it. I’ve grown to like it more and more as time goes on. The pockets arrangement is just wonderful, and I like brown.

As you can see, however, it’s suffered some scratches.

I have it completely stuffed. It wasn’t like this originally, but as time went on I added more and more pages with notes. (I’ve also put in another full month of 2 pages per day, and it fits!) You can see how much the Franklin Covey pages stick out. It didn’t bother me much originally, but lately it’s been bugging me. I think I may have to switch to another brand, since I don’t like the thought of switching binders – the Franklin Covey offerings just aren’t as good.

Side view.

At some point I started using my Filofax as a wallet. I spend a lot of time at coffee shops, and realized that I didn’t need to carry around my wallet when all I needed was an ID and credit card. Now I carry my auto insurance card, health insurance card, credit card, ID, student ID card, and card-sized diploma in the slots. The pocket beneath them has coupons and my sticky flags. US standard size papers that I need get folded in fourths and put in one pocket, and cash lives in the other pocket (where the purple paper is poking out). I have a clear flyleaf, and then my Filofax and Philofaxy cards.

This is my clear plastic envelope which makes up my real front page. That’s me and my husband when we were dating. :)

The backside. A note from my best friend, and a quote from an excellent book.

These are my tabs. The dividers are regular Filofax ones with the tabs cut off; the tabs are Martha Stewart ones by Avery. MLS is the degree I’m going for.

I decorated the dividers with stickers from Half Price. The post-its remind me what’s in each section. This is my “God” divider, which basically means it has anything to do with faith/church.

My MLS divider. I am a graduate student, studying library science. I will be doing an All Stars post about this section later on.

My “Me” section.

My pledge to stick with one set of calendar pages. I’m considering breaking it though…*innocent face*

Family divider. Currently it’s got a Day-Timer Hot List post-it on the other side with my list of gifts to get…I’ve only got 3 people left!

This section is sorely neglected…

This section is somewhat of a “miscellaneous” section, but most of it is important miscellaneous information – such as “important phone numbers” in case my phone goes dead or is unavailable and someone needs to get a hold of people close to me.

It also holds my Filofax brainstorm page, which has been neglected for several months. Turns out that being busy constantly takes away the need to do anything related to Filofax tweaking.

Here’s an example of a daily page. The daily tracker box is where I put my husband’s schedule. The notes page is an “inbox”.

And here’s a month. I can’t take a picture of a past month because there’s too much personal info! I do color-code my months – birthdays in light green, work in orange, deadlines in red, schoolwork in blue. I outline the actual day boxes with a colored pencil matching the pages, because I have trouble distinguishing between notes space and day boxes otherwise. I also write down my husband’s work shifts once they happen, and put how many hours I work in the notes space after each week.

More Filofax musings at the end of my calendar pages. I have a transparent flyleaf at the end to protect my pages. It helps the binder close better – though, the leather covering the zipper helps as well.

Stickers from Sandra on the other side of the flyleaf! I have some post-its and stickers from Sandra in that envelope. I rarely use these pockets, however.

The backside. You can see the wear.

As you can see, the rings are rather full…

Open to today. I have the current month and the next month in here.

And my today marker…

I never pay attention to these stickers. That’s a bad thing.

So, that’s my fall Filofax. I’m grateful that it’s served me well. Now that I’m on break, however, I’m starting to think about tweaking again. The daily pages are wonderful…and they are Franklin Covey, so they stick out. Also, they take up a LOT of space. I also end up forwarding tasks a lot, too.

I’m considering testing a GTD/week on 2 pages set-up while school is out. I don’t need the 2 pages per day right now, and I don’t think the to-do list is serving me well when I have no real deadlines (though it worked fairly well when I was in school, I think…I’m going to go back and analyze that). But I don’t have enough room in my Filofax for context to-do lists AND 2 months of 2ppd. I’ve also noticed that I need lines, and times are helpful. The cotton cream week on 2 pages from Filofax is beautiful, but it isn’t structured enough for me to be able to use it well. My mother’s Christmas present is the DayTimer Coastlines week on 2 pages, and I’m contemplating getting it or something similar. We’ll see! If I decide to keep the 2 pages per day, I might try DayRunner pages – very similar format, but Filofax sized instead of Franklin Covey sized.

It is utterly fascinating to see what people say about the *exact same* debate and the *exact same* book. Many times during the presidential debates, I saw statuses/Tweets of conservative Republicans and ardent Democrats juxtaposed on my news/Twitter feed. These updates were talking about the same part of the debate…and coming to completely opposite conclusions, every. single. time.

Certain conservative evangelical complementarian Christians have a huge problem with Rachel Held Evans’ book – they feel that her salvation is in doubt and that her book is mocking Christianity. Meanwhile, other less-conservative possibly-egalitarian still-evangelical Christians love the book and appreciate what it is trying to say.

In both of these situations, the bias is crystal clear. The conservative Christians I mentioned earlier cannot see the good in Rachel Held Evans’ book, because their paradigm makes them so biased that it is *impossible* for them to see it. In order to see the good, they would have to accept the possibility that she had something good to say – but their paradigm tells them that isn’t possible. For the Republicans and Democrats, it can be the same thing. The conservative Republican paradigm does not allow for good Democratic policies, or for Obama to want good for the US. For the more extreme Democrats, the idea that the Republican policies could be good for the country is an impossible thought.

We are all biased, of course – it’s impossible to avoid. But sometimes, bias takes on the character of absolute truth. When we use our “absolute truth” as an excuse to treat people with disdain and even hate instead of kindness and compassion, we create a horrible mess. But in too many cases, that’s exactly what happens. I think it’s time to stop the crazy and start thinking the best of others again, when at all possible.

In my first year of public school (which was 10th grade), I carried around Purell hand sanitizer and used it frequently. Now, whenever I use Purell, I get echoes of feelings of 10th grade.

Today, I washed my hands using black raspberry and vanilla hand soap at someone else’s house. Driving home, I tried to place it – the sense of expectation and order. I figured out that’s the hand soap we had right around the time I had my daughter. Before her birth, I spent time sitting and reading and studying…and I was very expectant. Odd how the echoes of those feelings come back to me.

So far I’ve left it this way, because I consider this a personal blog, which means I can get away with that, right? At the same time, I’m not sure politics/life posts really mix well with planner posts.

Thoughts?

Here are the bookmarks that I chose. You can see that they are almost exactly the height of the Today marker.

I placed the Today marker on top of the bookmark and made sure they were aligned. Then I took a pen and colored in the hole space. (I took this picture before actually doing it – when I did it, I flipped them around so that I was marking on the back of the bookmark.)

After doing that, I got this. I then used a single hole punch to do the holes. After that, I took scissors and cut carefully just on either side of the black line to create the slots.

Voila! A customized today marker without a lot of trouble! :)

I read a lot.  I don’t read very fast due to time constraints, but I always have one or two books going at once—a physical book and an audiobook to listen to in the car while driving to and from work.  I don’t own any audiobooks but I own plenty of physical books.  Because I consider them to be an essential part of my décor, I will never not have any.  I do weed out my collection from time to time, mainly when I can no longer display them in an eye-pleasing manner.  Yes, for that is how I organize my bookshelf, in a way that’s pleasing to the eye.  I used to buy most of my books, but in the last few years, I have bought very few.  Now it seems I get most of my books from the library.  I work for one, so why pay for books when I have such easy access to them?  I still will buy a book now and then—if it’s an author I love, if I want something new to take on vacation, etc.  Many of the books I already own have yet to be read, so I’m trying to not buy as many so that I can get through what I have first.  But you know how it is, I will check out a new book before getting to the ones I at home.  Oh well, that’s just the way it goes.

So what does my bookshelf look like?

My shelves consist not only of books but also pictures and very few knick-knacks.  (I’m not a knick-knack collector but I do have a handful.)  The shelves reside in our entryway by the front door.  There’s a lot of space there that’s hard to fill, but the bookshelves fit perfectly.  I desperately need new ones (I got these from a coworker when she moved a few years ago and they were 15 years old then).  Sadly, there is no room for a chair to make it a quasi-library, but maybe someday when we move from our condo to a house we can have a library/office.  The living room or patio works for now.

The organization of my book shelf is not rocket science but it probably doesn’t make any sense to anyone else but me.  Some people books anywhere but not me.  I put paperbacks of similar size together, as well as hardcovers.  I have a small collection of young adult novels that are together.  The few non-fiction titles I have are also together.  I do have a few author collections, and of course those are together.

Adriana Trigiani:

Jennifer Weiner:

Marian Keyes:

Sophie Kinsella:

Jodi Picoult:

I have several signed copies of Jodi’s books, and I have read most of them.  Perfect Match was the first book of hers that I got—given to me as a gift—I had never heard of her, but this was the start of my loyal following.

I used to buy old books—classics mostly—because I like the look of them, so they are grouped together as well.

Celia Garth isn’t considered as classic, and not very well known, but it’s a much-loved book in my family so I took my grandmother’s copy when she passed away.

You can see that I have a small Jane Austen collection going on as well.

The Christmas Tree is also not a classic but I love it.

You may have noticed that there is more than one copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on my shelf.  That is because it is my favorite book.  In fact, I have three copies.

The first copy I got was the small paperback edition.  This copy was well-worn by the time I got it as a hand-me-down, and since I read it every few years, it has a lot of wear to it.

The inside binding is even wearing thin.

My mother gave me the hardcopy when I graduated school.  I have always wanted a first edition of the book, but they are very hard to come by and are wicked expensive.

The trade paperback edition I got when I led a book discussion on it for work.

Some of my other favorites include:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (has a very Jane Eyre feel, another book that I love)

The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (check out the upcoming movie, as opposed to the original)

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart (I have previously mentioned why I love this book)

Honorable mentions go to:

Summer by Edith Wharton

1984 by George Orwell

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

So.  Having shown you a bit of my personal library, you may wonder how I go about picking my next selection (well, maybe you don’t care, but too bad, I’m gonna tell you anyway).

First, I have to say that I do the very bad thing of choosing my books by their covers.  I know it’s a cliché; people shouldn’t do that.  But honestly, it’s my jumping off point.  This is not to say that I won’t read books I don’t like the look of—if someone recommends something to me, I might read it (if the storyline interests me).  But there are so many books out there; I have to have a starting point.  And this is it.  I prefer simple, clean, organized covers (you’re shocked, I know) rather than a ton of color or something that looks hand-drawn rather than photographed.  Some examples are:

Shelter

Secret Daughter

Objects of My Affection

(These titles aren’t necessarily on my list, but doing a search through Barnes & Noble, they are covers that appeal to me for some reason.)

Once I’m hooked on an author, I will more than likely read other books by that person regardless of what the cover looks like (though to be honest, I’m always disappointed if their new book’s cover doesn’t appeal to me—I’ll still read it though).

This selection process has backfired on me too—I will choose a book because I love the cover so much, not pay attention to what it’s really about, and absolutely hate the book (sorry Twilight fans).

With all of that said, I do have a process by which I research my books (and movies and music).  I keep a list of how I can search for new titles (again, you’re shocked, I can tell).

When I have time, I go through my research list and check each resource listed (once I have checked a source, I make the text unbold so that I know where I left off).

You can see how many favorite authors I have:

Again, the same bold/plain text rule applies.

There are several book sources I check as well:

Once I have found a book I am interested in, I add it to my ever-growing book list.

Yes, just like my Filofax, my booklist is color coded.

Black – titles that I can only get in physical book format

Blue – titles that are available on audio, whether in CD format or as an electronic download

Green – titles I own

Orange – items I have placed on hold at the library

Red – items I currently have checked out

Bold – titles I have a high interest in, regardless of what category it falls into

I also keep a list of upcoming books, items that haven’t yet been published.

Again they are color coded:

Black – anything that does not yet have a specific date

Orange – titles that have a specific date that is too far away to request

Red – titles that I can request but whose date I want to add to my Filofax

Green (not shown) – titles that I have in my Filofax (I carry only three month’s worth of calendar pages with me, which is why I need the distinction)

Once an upcoming title has been placed on hold, I will move it from the upcoming list to the regular book list.

For anyone who might be wondering, I do try to update my list every time I check something out or return it.  It doesn’t always work out that way, but the color coding helps with this too—if I forget to remove an item from my book list, I can see that it needs to be when I open my file.  Anything in red that I’m not currently reading needs to be removed or made a different color if I never did get to read it.

I keep all of these lists as Google Documents.  My list is way too long to keep in my Filofax (currently I have 272 titles on my list).  Also, I need the list alphabetized by author so that I can search to see if a title is already on my list or not—sadly, my Filofax won’t put the list in alphabetical order for me, and I can’t search an un-alphabetized list very well.  I don’t want to have to reprint a written list every time I add or remove a title.  Plus, using Google Docs allows me to access my list when I need to, and since I’m using the computer to do the research anyway, it just makes sense for me to use this format.

I hope you have enjoyed my explanation of my book choices and that I haven’t bored you to tears.  Thank you to Bluebonnet Reads for allowing me to provide this guest post!

The second diary format I used was very kindly mailed all the way from France by Steve of Philofaxy. It is the Filofax cotton cream week on two pages, with the days all the same size and a notes space above Monday. I honestly love this layout – it works quite well. My problem with it is that it’s very compact, and I just don’t think I can squeeze everything I want or need to note in a day-specific way into this diary.

Today, the third diary format arrived – Franklin Covey 2 pages per day (in the Serenity pattern). I ordered these because I am starting grad school in just over a week, and several people recommended the 2ppd, saying that I would need the room. (Thanks Laurie, Rori, and Zoe! and anyone else I’m forgetting!) I’ve used the page per day layout before with success. This diary also comes with a month on 2 pages, which is absolutely essential for use with daily pages.

I just finished getting all my appointments, etc. written over. The daily sheets are still quite bare, as most of my to-dos are still on the context sheets and grad school hasn’t yet started, but I expect they will fill up rapidly. I do feel like there’s a lot more room to breathe, which is nice. The pages are sectioned: appointments, to-dos, a “daily tracker,” and notes. I’m going to use the daily tracker for my husband’s schedule, and I think this will work VERY well. In the past I’ve taken the top line of the appointments, or just the “margin” of a day space on a weekly page, and neither of those have worked too well. The daily tracker box gives me room to note details if I like, and it means his schedule is not taking up space where my schedule needs to be! The notes page will be used as an inbox-type thing as well as having the extra information I will need for assignments.

So, there you have it. I am planning on forcing myself to stick with this format. My problem is that I sometimes try and fix what isn’t broken! Ack! I really must learn not to do that.

2) Ooh soft and smooth.

3) Woo, no gaps in the rings!!!

4) Hm. The rings seem to almost be *bent* where they close, kind of like my Franklin Covey classic’s, but a tad bit moreso. But still, no gaps yay!

5) Man, this is FLOPPY!

6) This is not the same type of ring mechanism as my Finchley – this one has things (I presume it’s the attachments) on the metal.

7) Ooh fun stuff that came inside the Holborn

8) ooh lots of pockets!

9) …I need to go to work soon and my kid does not appreciate how awesome Filofaxes are.

Sadly, this post has only one picture. I know, it’s blasphemy – but there has been too much going on which involves my family, or friends, and it’s all on my planner pages…and I’m too lazy to blur out *that* much stuff. Sorry! *looks sheepish* I do, however, have this picture which explains how I use the weekly pages. The green highlighting is the most recent stuff and what’s remained consistent over the past couple weeks. I’ve turned the bottom part of the righthand notes page into a space for weekend to-dos, as the weekend days have less space. (Also, please note that the color is off in this picture – the pages are much whiter than they appear.)

There are also two sets of monthly calendars – year at a glance for July-Dec 2012, 2013, and 2014, as well as vertical monthly calendars (line a day) for July 2012-Dec. 2013. I’m using the spaces between months in the year-at-a-glance part to record important monthly notes, like people graduating or when the pest guys come. The vertical monthly calendars I’m using to record our income and any super important events. I also put my bill-tracking sticky flags on the vertical monthly pages. There are also some notes pages at the back, which I’m using for important lists, including gift ideas, a wish list, and a Someday list.

I’ve also taken up color-coding, which means I’m carrying around a bag of pens everywhere..but that’s okay! I use purple for personal things, dark green for anything to do with family, blue for grad school, orange for work, brown for faith-related things, red for can’t-miss important stuff, and black for everything else – which usually means housework and errands! Both appointments and to-dos are color coded throughout the planner, and notes sometimes are as well. I’ve also got stickers from the lovely Sandra which will brighten the pages right up!!

So far, this is working great for me. I love the weekly view, and how light and portable it is, and how it’s a bound book. I do wish there was more notes space. I tried taking a pocket Moleskine cahier to work the other day, though, and it worked wonderfully as an inbox, so that might be the solution. However, all of this is subject to change depending on what my planning needs are once I start grad school!

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment with questions, comments, vilification for being too lazy to take more photos…but please don’t be too mean. ;)

There are so many things wrong with this that I’m not sure where to start.

The comparison itself is a truly awful one. Wild animals most likely have plenty of their own food sources available to them, all for the price of a hunt. If they don’t, then they may very well be endangered and people will be worried about their prospects. Also, notice that no one complains about the zoo animals’ unhealthy dependence on humans; there, you’re not supposed to feed the animals because it screws up their diet. There’s more to this than just “animals will grow dependent on handouts”. Human beings in the United States, on the other hand, need money to pay for food, and in order to have money they need to have a job. They also have to worry about transportation, and housing, and utilities. Jobs can be difficult to get, even when you are qualified or over-qualified. When a person has a job, it may be one that pays poorly. Or it could be that the person recently experienced an unexpected reduction in income, and their financial commitments are now too large for the income but may be hard or impossible to escape. Whatever the reason, money is tight. The person is most likely perfectly capable of working, shopping, and cooking; it’s a question of how much opportunity there is to do those things. Yet somehow, a lot of other people don’t care a whit about these situations, unlike in the animals’ cases. To compare a poor person to a lazy animal is insulting and inaccurate. It’s a bumper-sticker “explanation”, and the only thing it does is harm.

Poverty is a complex issue. It can hit even the most well-educated, hard-working, upright people and leave them applying for food stamps and welfare. Poverty is not a respecter of persons. It is a grating experience, and once you’re in the cycle it can be incredibly difficult to escape. This is doubly true for those who grew up in poverty, especially if the poverty is accompanied by low levels of education. These combined can make it hard to get a job, as this blog post explains. Poverty is losing your job because your car broke down, you couldn’t afford to fix it, you couldn’t get to work, and you got fired. Poverty is working multiple minimum wage jobs and having a large portion of your wages go to subpar daycare. Poverty is having no recourse to credit cards in an emergency and having to resort to loan sharks. (For more, see Nickel and Dimed.) And guess what? It could happen to you. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably better equipped to get out of it than a lot of people.

I’m sure there are “welfare queens” – but I’m equally sure that the vast majority of people on government aid have it because they need it, or because they qualify and they’re taking advantage of it because it makes life easier. Yes, they may be spending their money poorly. The answer to that is not to take away their money, or to make a burdensome list of requirements to get aid, or to automatically disqualify anyone with anything remotely nice (computers, iPods, etc.). The answer is to educate people on money management, and why they want to change their spending habits.

The most important thing, though, is to listen to people’s stories. Understand where they’re coming from. Don’t distance yourself and be satisfied with leaving the poor to be the “other” – the lazy welfare queens of your imagination. Treat other people as *people*, not stereotypes. Maybe then things could be changed, a person at a time. And when you see a person with an iPhone pulling out her food stamp card in the checkout line, think about it: maybe it’s an iPod that someone gave her. Maybe she’s bound into the contract, doesn’t have another non-smart-phone to switch to, and buying that non-smart-phone would cost more than she can afford, so she’s stuck paying that extra $20 a month. You don’t know, so perhaps you should stop judging.