2015 Hobonichi Check In

You may not have remembered, but I got a Hobonichi last year for my birthday. 

I was super excited to use it, and started the year out strong. Every day had something on it, for the most part, even if some days were just quick notes the day after because I had forgotten or was too tired at the end of the night to do it that way.

And then, well, I got my Chic Sparrow. And it happened to show up while I was also in the midst of quite an "off" time, and needed more than an A6 size space to journal in, so I moved over to the Chic Sparrow and, well, as things go...
The Hobonichi was left on it's own. 
To be sad and lonesome.

Once we started getting serious about moving, I tried using it as a log of what got packed when. Which worked, until I got to the point where we weren't moving yet, and nothing else could be packed up.
Then in July, I tried using it as a detailed cleaning list - I was "cleaning the kitchen", but I wasn't doing all of the tasks, so I figured if I wrote down everything I wanted to do, there'd be no "oh, well, I forgot to do it" which worked. For about a week and a half.
Then I got a fountain pen, so I decided to try it out on the Hobonichi paper (which works wonderfully, if you were wondering).

And then about a month ago I pulled it out again.
I wasn't journaling a whole lot in my Chic Sparrow any more, because I just didn't have a whole lot going on worth pulling it out for. But the Hobonichi is, well, small. And I had all these extra pages in the middle of the year, that if I needed more room on a day, I could go back to an empty page and continue (of course, noting as such on both the current day and the past day to what goes where). The A6 size pages were no longer hindering, so to speak.

It's actually working out quite well. 
I'm using my fountain pen with pink cartridges at the moment, and the brightness of the ink is fabulous. Even if just to jot a few quick notes at the end of the day. The color makes it great, and the ease of writing with the fountain pen is quite welcoming.
And while I may not end the year with a completely full book, it will be done, so to speak.

The problem with the Hobonichi is simple. It's dated.
I just don't do well with dated. Especially for journaling. A6 is either too small or too big - it's very rarely the right size. And while it was working out at the beginning of the year, I was still journaling in my Moleskine when I needed the extra space, until the Chic Sparrow arrived.
It could be a decent planner, but there isn't really room for lists and things, so it would need to be supplemented with something.
If I had any kind of notes or tracking to do (that I actually kept up with, that is), it would work well, as the space would more than likely be sufficient.

But as a daily journal, it just doesn't work for me. I can't keep up with it, the space isn't right, and it's just...I want to love it. I do love it. But that doesn't mean that it will work.

I know there are plenty of people who absolutely adore their Hobonichi books and can stick with it the whole year and not have any issues. I'm just not one of them.
So, I will continue as a I have been this past month until the end of the year, and then archive it away (with the rest of my ramblings) as a lesson-learned.

~Havok

P.S. I've hidden away, so to speak, my various other notebooks and places to journal, so that the only thing within reach is the Hobonichi, to ensure that it is the book I am able to easily get to in order to journal. Sometimes, laziness is something you can work with instead of trying to solve - this is one of those times!