Planners and moving onto the next chapter

New Year Resolutions.  We all make them even if we are adamant that we don't...secretly to ourselves we hope to achieve all the goals and ambitions that we have been thinking about for some time - or in my case years and years and years.  

So what is going to make this year any different?  That is the question I have also asked myself for years and years and years.

I came across this quote:

It has resonated with me quite strongly and after all the courses about Life Coaching and all the other things that I have read and researched and discovered over the last few months, it has made it all the more strong.  

I do NOT want to end 2015 in the same place I am now.

So it goes without saying that if I don't sort myself out and actually do something different, I am ALWAYS going to get the same result - by eating badly and not working out I am going to end up the same as I am now or WORSE!!!  If I don't study, I am not going to pass the exams and get qualified either!

I am arguing with myself over starting yet another gym membership...the last three never worked out for me or rather I never worked out - hence why I am still in the same situation!!

The reason for my choice of gym is that this one has a lovely yoga studio and the last time that I went to it (on a month's trial) I really, really enjoyed the yoga.  I came out of the class feeling...lighter in mind and spirit.  Not only that but being scared of water, the 4ft all the way pool is also a bonus :) They have a lot of good classes on - although to be fair I think that you have to be a little bit fit to even do the beginner ones as the aching for three days after a class does not make me want to return!

Over the last two years I have suffered at the evil hands of anxiety and as a result my head has felt jumbled, foggy, chaotic and really just a bit of a mess.  This is why I got into planners quite so heavily as I was trying every which way to make sense of everything but the fuzzy in my head never let me achieve the clarity.  I'm thinking to be honest that with hindsight it made things even worse as I went overboard...turned it into a bit of an obsession...

Who needs this many sticky notes??

Crazy...this wasn't even half the collection!

And it just got worse and worse and now I feel as though - just before I exploded with confusion and despair - I made a breakthrough.

It was all I needed to stop and take stock of everything, work out where I wanted to be and how I needed to get there, the planner world is constantly repeating this over and over and over again but yet we still get sucked in to the whole madness of it all and end up not just owning beautiful planners that we can adore and treasure but in a big stinking hole of despair as to which one to use, the guilt for buying yet another one, the guilt for using a different one, the frustration of the pages not working for us, the hell of needing to erase something that has changed - and then the dilemma of do we white it out, put washi over it, use a sticker?  Or maybe just write in pencil, or frixion or use nothing but washi....this is not the most relaxing, go with the flow lifestyle I was kinda hoping for!!

All it took was a planner that I adored, that worked, that was simplistic and useful and that came with the VDS Senior.  It tells me where and when and has room for thoughts, lists, photo's, motivational/inspirational and sentimental stuff that makes me smile.

  

This is all I need, there is enough crazy going on in the rest of my life so it's a breath of fresh air to look at my planner and see it all neatly organised and a lot less complicated than my mind makes it!!

This wasn't really meant to be a planner post and I am quite surprised at how 'stuck' it must have made me feel for a while there...it's the good thing about writing these posts is that sometimes when you least expect it you get a 'lightbulb moment' and it is like a real slap to the forehead...'why didn't I think of it like that before...." kind of thing!  I was trapping myself into a world of crazy instead of just letting it all go and starting again.

I feel that there will be a shift in the subject of my blogging in the future.  I feel as though I have planner peace in my VDS's now and I have bleated on about that for long enough as it is!  I don't decorate or do anything worth showing in my planner other than use it as above...not very exciting but totally functional.

It may be with sadness that I now feel I can leave the planner world and move on to the next chapter...and I am seriously hoping that it involves a lot of fitness, health and nutrition stuff with those magical hints and tips for successful studying!!

I will be back but I don't know what with at this stage.  

Until then, take care xxx

Van Der Spek A5 Manager Touch Me

I've ordered it!

In brown.

With 35mm rings!

I am so excited!!

This is it, this is THE ONE, I cannot wait for it to arrive and I will do an update of course! :)

This beast of a binder will be living at home on my desk and I am intending to use it for my Diploma Studies and general NPL and Life Coach stuff so will end up being something of a life manual to help with getting the best out of me.

So no pressure then....

Eek!! I cannot tell you in words how giddy I am!!

Until next time, take care xxx

Van Der Spek set up

Last Friday my Van Der Spek planner in 'senior' size arrived and I had very little time to play as I  was busy organising my eldest with his packing for leaving to go to University on the Saturday.  Can you believe that he hadn't even done any laundry??  He had mentioned earlier in the week that he had started his packing...I should have checked then as all that meant was he had put his Xbox and games in a box - no clothes or anything else!!  So come Friday it was a mad rush to get everything sorted out (and washed) and packed away ready for the 5.30am departure for our 5 hour drive to his University.  He has started the next chapter of his life...it's been a strange week end for me.

Anyway fortunately I had the sense to book today off work and set about organising myself and setting up my new planner.

It did come with some 'senior' size inserts which are the same width as filofax personal and just a bit shorter.  I realised that I could have true A6 inserts (Mulberry agenda size) which are wider but I would have to make them myself.

Obviously I had to get the polar bear back in as a matter of urgency so that was the first job :)

It's my trade mark Polar Bear - couldn't miss him out!

He was a bit small to laminate on his own so I backed him with some lovely leopard cardstock which I think looks fab!

Next came the diary inserts, I bought these off Etsy and they are from July 2014 - December 2014 which is all I needed for now.  I tried designing my own but to be honest I couldn't be bothered messing about and I wanted something now!  I really need to learn how to use Publisher before the end of the year so I can do them - I will be making notes for the rest of the year on things I need to change or add so that I can hopefully design the perfect insert for my needs from 2015...watch this space!

Simple but effective

I didn't like the right hand page that came with the download, it was like graph notepaper and as my paper is just ordinary printer paper it was showing through too much.  I just did my own with 'Notes' at the top and a different quote on each page for a bit of interest/inspiration.  I love quotes!!

I need to find some nicer paper for when I do my 2015 inserts, I really don't like this white printer paper it looks cheap and just isn't nice for inserts at all!!  I need to find out what the Kate Spade inserts are printed on as they have been my absolute favourite ones so far - so if anyone knows the weight of this paper, please leave me a comment below!

After the diary comes the notes/to do section and I have laminated a print that I love...

She is organised, confident and sassy!

And after her come the To Do's on 100gsm paper that I thought would be great to use as it takes fountain pen ink really well but even that bleeds the ink through if you print on both sides (I didn't write in fountain pen on both sides so I didn't realise this) but it'll do for now but it isn't the right type.

I love the colour and texture of this paper

So all that is left to do now with this baby is use it!!

The leather is so so soft and I love the full width back pocket but I wont be using it as a wallet (for now) as I have just moved into my Fossil 'Long Live Vintage' purse that I got from eBay for a whopping £2.57.  It's been sealed in an airtight container for a week with bicarbonate of soda and tumble dryer sheets to get rid of the musty smell it had but it's worked so I'm happy now and I think the two of them go together quite well :)

I hope that I have finally found permanent 'Planner Peace' with this one.  It is large enough to not feel cramped, especially with the wider pages, and yet small enough to not take over my bag!  The rings are also smaller at 20mm so I wont be able to stuff it with all those extra pages that I never ever use!!  

I think it's a good thing that I didn't want to use the pages that came with it for exactly that reason.  It has meant that I have had to think what I need, what I actually use and then design them.  There is little point filling it up with expense sheets, measurement sheets, full year calendars, public holidays, addresses, etc, etc. as I just never use them!  I will put an emergency contact sheet in with my most used numbers just in case my phone dies on me but that's all.  

The next set up post will be on my new A5 Original in patent 'Latte' which I am going to use as a personal development filo as I am starting a new college course this week on 'Life Coaching' so I will do something on that once I find out what I need.

Until then, take care xxx

Plan for life goals

I have succumbed to the fact that no matter how hard I try I just cannot study using an A5 planner or notebook.  It just is not big enough for me to express all I want to get written down and turns out to be pages and pages because they are just too small.

So, I have decided to use an A4 pad - I did look at A4 planners but they are just too big and cumbersome I think to use practically and realistically - so I will be filing the papers away into a ring binder as I can't get away from the fact that I love to insert different things and I cannot cope with the whole spiral bound thing!  I guess that's the result of using a Filofax for so long, I just don't know how to deal with the fact I will want to do my own inserts and dividers and the dread of messing up a page fills me with fear so much that I never actually get started!!  So, the file idea is a good one from that perspective.

I have already designed some pages with inspirational and motivational quotes and images, whether I will make those into dividers will become apparent once the system has evolved a little.  I think they probably will although I like the idea of using some fun sparkly dividers just to jolly it up a bit - I mean the subject is Insurance Law and Liability Insurance and you can't really get any duller than that so it may need an injection of something!

As I have spent all morning designing special pages I have done no studying at all - I hope though that at the end of the study this will look like something worth looking at!  I am hoping that by making a dull thing interesting that it will keep my motivation going - or get it started - and that I will start to enjoy the whole experience rather than the feeling that it is just draining me of everything!!

I will be using my pocket Kate Spade or maybe Chameleon for flash style cards, I think they will come in very handy at holding those kind of index cards and it will give them a purpose, plus I get to use a Filofax in my study plan!

I have no photographs to share yet as I haven't printed out my special pages, my printer is low on ink and the one at work is much better quality so that's when I will print them out.  I will update on the progress of my new Study File and Flash Style Planner as soon as I have got them looking anything like interesting.

But here's a sneak preview of some of the delights that will be included:

Always work better with caffeine!

Something that relates to anything and everything

This case established the modern law of negligence and established the neighbour test!

And here's a pic of my newly set up Flash Style Planner, these index cards were really cheap (I think £1 for 50) and they are going to be great for study use on-the-go...

Let's hope this all works out otherwise I am back to square one!  I have TWO exams in October as I didn't plan my study time and as a result I failed an exam that I took in April by just 13 marks!  If I had taken the time I needed to study properly and effectively I would have easily passed but cramming it all into the three weeks before the exam was both extremely stressful and stupid.  So to keep within my 'game plan' of passing four exams by October 2015 I have to now do two in October - and pass them!  Then I will have another one in April 2015 and the last one in October 2015 - I will then be qualified!

And then I will truly and honestly be able to say...

Until next time, take care xxx