Thing Challenge 2026

notebook ecosystem

Jan 06 so with the new year comes consumerist stationery propaganda, telling you that if you by X notebook and Y writing utensils and Z stickers you'll be able to get yourself together for the coming year. this is some keeping up with the joneses conspicuous consumption type shit, so i want to intentionally take stock of my current notebook ecosystem and figure out what works for me and what doesnt.

the personal

in my personal life, i use a diary and a sketchbook. both of these are rebuys of the exact model of the previous iteration, no need to change perfection.

i start diaries on my birthday, and i sprung for a fancier one with smooth cream-coloured paper and more pages, because in the past i've run out of pages, and now i have a fountain pen. okay, fine. it's some name brand snobbery. i write in it every morning (with exceptions for travel— i bring it with me if i'm going somewhere for >1 week). it's my most used but somehow least relevant notebook. i'm a fan of the size (a5) and the way my fountain pen interacts with the paper (very smooth, no bleeding or feathering), probably like 70ish gsm. i prefer the dot grid (5mm) over the blank. i do think it's some conspicuous consumption shit to collect inks, but unfortunately i get bored of seeing the same ink color over many pages.

a5 is solidly my favorite notebook size at this point, having tried a4/a6/b5 sketchbooks. it just fits well— in a hand, in a bag, on a table, etc. this one's plain white paper with a bit of tooth, which is how i like my paper. (the cold press paper rabbithole was... intense). sometimes i find myself longing for a4, to make sweeping marks from the elbow, but practically it's just unwieldy. a6 is small enough that you feel like you must fill the entire page with one work. i enjoyed using it, it got me into keeping an artbook, but i probably wouldn't go back (and would probably want to upgrade to something that can hold water-soluble paint better because wow, that page warping was insane). the toothy white paper (150gsm) pairs well with colored pencil or a pen that uses archival ink— though it's tough enough to tolerate most media. i haven't truly tried full watercolor or paint though... in the past, making myself paint consistently started giving me an itch to paint, even when i didn't "need" to. similarly, my past plein air ink goals has given me have an itch to draw still lifes wherever i can, turning this notebook into an essential daily carry (more than a laptop, less than a cellphone). the most important part: the amount of personalization and memory-making that comes from stickering the hell out of it.

the utility

for the utility of it, i have a yearly planner and pocket notepad, unintentionally recreating the organized planner/braindump scratchpad duality (yes, this is a trope). i tried a bujo once, when i was 16 or so, couldn't keep it up after 3 months. i've found a happy middle ground between the overwhelming freedom/time commitment of a bujo and the rigidity of a school issued planner. it has 12 full months (with weeks), with 2 only-months tacked onto either end so you have a bit of buffer time before you need to buy your next one. all of the pages have 12 printed bubbles, and you fill in the bubble for the month you're on. on the month page: you handwrite the year and the dates on a blank calendar (with a little misc notes area underneath). i picked monday start, and on each week page i bubble in the month and write in the dates next to the printed days of the week. it does suffer from the age old problem described by mina murray from dracula— saturday and sunday are squeezed into one line, making them half the size of the other days (judicious use of sticky notes mitigates this). throughout undergrad the month calendar was for life + social events, and the week pages were for assignments. things are a bit unmoored now, so i only remember to use it every few weeks. i don't need to be perfect at using it, i just need it to help me remember things from time to time.

i have an a7 pocket notepad with a semi-rigid plastic cover, though i didn't use it much in 2025 (ran out of space for new pages, and i'm still not sure about how/if i want to archive the finished pages). when i remembered it, i used it to write writchals or diary entries when away from home. i've used it for grocery lists, for meeting notes, to give a page that the beths could sign (the stranger had gotten the black tshirt, unfortunately). it's a useful little guy, and i hope to bring it more places once i figure out how to archive what i've already done.

the digital

the digital tools i use are much more scattered than the analogue ones. i primarily draft emails and write for fun using microsoft notepad. unfortunately, they have since introduced markdown, but there is something simplistic and unintimidating about writing in plaintext. less of a pain than google docs, less of a barrier than something like ellipsus or some other writer's app. the default notes app on my cellphone is used (when i can remember) for things that i don't remember. mainly for things to search up later, or diary entries when i am away from home. the default reminders app on my cellphone is used primarily for one reason: hands free voice assistant. you think of something and just say, "set reminder 10am tomorrow that...". and it's just there. otherwise, it's an unpleasant interface to interact with, and i hate seeing the notifications of undone things clog up my lockscreen. there's a couple other apps i use for tracking weird irregular medication or how often i stretch or floss.

the miscellaneous

couple of not-quite-notebooks that don't-quite have a place in the ecosystem: two writing pads (one is more of a notepad that i use for misc lists that need to be big, the other for when i regularly wrote letters), a weekly tearaway pad that i purchased for some reason, and many mini square note sheets.

well, here's the first entry of 2026. ended up being more self-writing than literary, but i needed a space to ramble. and also, i need to do sketchbook show and tell with people irl.