Beyond practical, your daily planner is a catalog of memories

There are some things I can’t change even if people make fun of me. I cannot, make that will not, keep my daily calendar in my cell phone. When I pull my new blue book out of my purse, people roll their eyes. The younger the person, the bigger the eye roll.

I am a pencil and paper person. I like to write things down, not type things in. And I’ll admit the older I get the more things I have to write down. If you’re over 50 you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, just wait. There will come a day you won’t be able to read the small print or remember things the way you do now.

But back to the calendar thing. Remember the feeling when you got a new notebook at the first of the school year? That’s how I feel when I get my new daily planner. I start out by putting birthdays and other important dates in it. This year when I took down the Christmas decorations, I put a few notes on the dates when I know I’ll be decorating next year. For example on Nov. 24, I wrote, “Remember every decoration you get out you will have to put away.” Needless to say I wrote that after finally getting holiday décor stored back in the closet, the attic and the basement.

Even better than starting to fill out the new planner is what I do at the end of each year. Page by page I go through to see what the past year held. It’s a way of reviewing the good, the bad and yes, sometimes the ugly.

Sadly I attended a record number of funerals of friends this year. But happily the good times recorded in my 2016 planner outweigh the bad by far. Projects I got to work on were not only fun but profitable for the organizations involved. Looking through the pages at the many, many events and organizations listed, I was once again amazed at the energy, creativity and generosity of Wichitans.

Taking note of the new friends made during the year is another advantage of reviewing the past 12 months. Being on boards and committees and a freelance job at VIPWichita magazine brought new acquaintances and good friends.

When squares on a month-at-a-glance page are blank it’s always due to travel. Those empty squares on last September’s page brought back fond memories of a cruise my husband and I took down the Danube River.

The lined pages in the back have notes from numerous meetings. For example when I met with the Jamee Ross and Kathy Swenson at Botanica about writing a children’s book to benefit the Merry-Go-Round project. I’d always wanted to write a children’s book and now it has happened. Those notes wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but it’s fun to see your first thoughts on something then later say, “Yep, we did that.”

Notes I took while meeting with Karla Fazio and Katy Dorrah regarding the new Mark Arts ended abruptly because I was so excited I couldn’t write anything down. And now, thanks to the hard work of many, the building is going up at 13th and Rock Road.

A year goes by so quickly, each one flying past faster than the one before. It’s exciting to look ahead to this new year, which will packed with challenges, good and bad experiences and personal firsts. All will become memories.

I made a few notes in the back of the 2016 planner then added it to the stack of others.

Yes, I save them all.

This story was originally published January 26, 2017 at 12:39 PM with the headline "Beyond practical, your daily planner is a catalog of memories."