As much as I’m a huge fan of new technology, I love my Filofax. That, my purse and my Moleskine notebook … they are items I can never let go of. Could easily put everything on my Blackberry and ease the weight on my shoulder when I’m carrying my purse, but it’s not about that. It’s about the feeling of having this old book … its fine leather, all its little compartments … the little thing to stick my Cross pen into … to be able to physically browse paper — not a screen … to touch the leather.
To be honest … I don’t even need one these days. «A personal organizer»!!! For Pete’s sake … I don’t have that many appointments that I need to keep track of, I hardly have any at all. It’s just a part of who I am, I like to write in it. Most of the above goes for my purse too … and the more compartments the better.
Like any other human being, there have been times when life wasn’t all that rosy, and my Filofax has been with me through thick and thin. One thing I noticed about that was that the tougher the times, the more I wrote! I have years filed away back home, where almost each day was filled with scribbled notes, and boy, were they ever dark! When I read them, I remember well where I was in life and what it felt like. When you’re in the midst of it, I guess you just deal with it, but in hindsight I sometimes wonder how I survived.
At the end of each year, I buy a refill for my Filofax … I look at a year ahead … wondering what it might bring — all those 365 days, sometimes even 366.
colderweather2011 
Hi,
Good on you for sticking with it. It’s always good I feel to actually write things down on paper if you like to go back and look at what you have written previously. I know friends that have lost a lot of personal data that was kept on computers only to be lost because they didn’t back it all up.
Mags, That’s a very important aspect of the whole thing. I would have lost so much…
Sometimes, the ‘old fashioned’ ways are still the best!
Barb, There are certain things [like this] that I like to hold on to…
I used to have a DayRunner. Loved it. Spent a fortune on one with a great cover — tapestry. I used it all the time. But. When I got my Palm mobile phone, I no longer needed it. And even less with my Blackberry. I just got tired of carrying it around. It was larger than yours.
Sometimes I read back in my daily journal. Some days are beyond dark. And yet I have survived. I surely have some Viking blood somewhere or I would not be here today. Surely.
Julie, Same here … it was beyond dark, some days, especially 1986. I just never got used to putting in all on the phone … and as I said, I love to have that book 🙂
Portrait of an Old Friend:
I love it! And the essay that goes with it, why it’s so meaningful, where it’s been with you —
And the contrast with the Blackberry! What a witty picture —
I can almost feel the Filofax, its surface lovingly rubbed, right through my computer screen.
Neat post, Rebekah.
Thank you, J … it’s fun to write about something one really likes … or sometimes not 🙂
some things that we own, own us in a very precious way.
I don’t have a filofax (?) or a day planner, but I do carry around a leather bound journal everywhere I go. It is heavy, but there is something about holding a pen or pencil in my hand and feeling the words as I form them and hearing the scratch of nib to paper as I write. I mostly use the computer these days, but I always keep the journal with me . . . just in case. I’ve been doing this for a about 15 years now, maybe more. And despite the fact that i compose on the computer, I manage to fill the journal, too. I consider the journal my REAL writing.
Cecelia, That’s about the same way I feel about it too … Even though I do most things on the computer — like you say, it’s something about that feeling..