53. Time to get organised

Turns out I want a plan. And: results of the banana-peeling poll!

Dear Reader,

I have plans.

I never used to plan: historically, any of my plans for anything, such as what I’m having for tea, what I want to do when I grow up¹ or for getting to the station on time, have been random, unreliable, impossible to achieve or sometimes even all three.

In the examples above, my lack of planning would leave me hungry, impact my career or cause me to miss the train.

Only here for the banana-peeling poll results from post 50?
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Scroll down - I’ll see you at the bottom of the page!

When I started writing here on Substack in early summer 2022, I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have a theme. My first post was about notebooks, my second about my passion for walking. Posts about my to-do list and the inconvenience of being over six feet tall followed, but it wasn’t until I’d been writing for a month that I had finally acknowledged that what I really wanted to explore was my alarming habit of getting lost.

So, last July my newsletter ‘Dear Reader’ became ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’, and the name change signalled my stepping into my big girl boots to own my identity. To acknowledge who I am. What I am. Reader, I’m a person who gets lost.

This early post of mine was quite the announcement, and I was glad at last to have acknowledged the fact that yes, I am a disorient:

8. Disempowered by euphemism

Regular readers will know that I have certainly become a planner.

On one of my very last engagements with the endless scroll of Twitter², I spotted a tweet illustrated with a picture of a notebook bulging with artwork and calligraphy. ‘MY BULLET JOURNAL!’ announced the Canva caption, and the words described this as a planning tool. My subsequent dive down the YouTube planning rabbit hole led me to an impressive warren filled with beautiful but complicated notebooks: they were certainly works of art, but in many cases I struggled to see how effective they would be as planners.

A link led me to bulletjournal.com, and a five-minute video entitled ‘Start here’. In it, Ryder Carroll, the inventor of the bullet journal system, demonstrates with impressive clarity the layers of what is a very uncomplicated planning method.

Apparently, to get started I would need only a notebook – any notebook – and a pen. Sure, I had those already. Game on!

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My first two bullet journals were slim notebooks ruled with lines. Once I’d done the groundwork and got used to the system, I found I wanted to move to the ‘official’ bullet journal notebook for my third volume, which at the time was the Leuchtturm 1917 A5 dot grid Bullet Journal Edition³.

My archive of bullet journals from October 2018 to November 2022. I fill a notebook every four months, and clearly I’m going to need a bigger shelf…

It’s easy to start a plan – a list, an overview of the week – with the things you know you’re going to do. Given that my work commitments are very fluid, it’s really helpful to have non-work constants on my schedule.

Those repetitive items on the weekly timetable for my home life, however trivial they may seem – ordering groceries for Monday for delivery Tuesday, putting the bins out on Wednesday, replacing the battery in my insulin pump – all provide a basic, broad-brushed structure on which to build the rest of my week.

And it’s the same with the meal planning section of my kitchen page.

• Friday is fish day.

• Saturday we have a roast.

• Sunday night is curry night.

There: that’s three out of seven days almost planned even before I pick up my biro. I’ll decide the specifics (fish pie, fish curry? Pork, brisket, turkey?) on a weekly basis, but already knowing what we’re having on these three days is immensely helpful for narrowing down my planning for the remaining four.

The ‘Meals’ section in the bottom right is easy to populate, because Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are always on the same theme. That leaves me with just four days a week to plan meals for.

You can read about my kitchen page and its superhero time-saving powers below, where you can also download it for free, no strings. Enjoy!

36. The Kitchen Page

Just like my weekly schedule and my meal planning – both aspects of my life which save me an immense amount of time – I felt I needed an overview of my Substack life on which to plan a structure.

Many YouTube content creators talk about planner pages or even entire notebooks dedicated specifically to their content planning.  Despite publishing regular posts here on Substack I’ve never seen myself as a ‘content creator’, nor identified any need to plan such things as this.

Yet when I saw a video by Ryder Carroll a couple of weeks ago, which was boldly-titled: ‘Plan your Entire Year with a Year at a Glance Page’, I decided to adopt a version of the page for my Substack schedule.

Instead of dividing each month into weeks (problematic, as every month only contains three or four whole weeks, with a part-week either before or after the whole ones, or both), I’ve listed only the Saturdays and Wednesdays on which I’m intending to publish a post.

It took me just a few minutes to draw a grid to represent the year divided into quarters and months, and then to look up the dates for the days I want to focus on, which I entered in pencil.

That’s fine as far as the timetable is concerned, but what about subject matter?

Here’s what my three-section newsletter covers:

• Dear Reader, I’m lost

  I write about getting lost, and about notebooking or planning, with other posts on subjects that pique my interest (how to peel a banana and being too tall for campsite showers to name but two).

• Letters to Terry ✒️

  With humour at the forefront of our light-hearted exchanges, my regular correspondence with fellow British Substacker Terry Freedman is something I relish! Our letters cover a variety of topics, and I enjoy the cut and thrust of what is a reactive, more spontaneous, writing process.

• Art and Treasures 🖼️

  Started in January, these posts are my opportunity to explore a memory or object from my life in words and art.

Once I’d broken down my subject matter it was easy to start populating my overview.

Letters to Terry are published on alternate Wednesdays, and I popped those onto my overview first.

Arts and Treasures posts are reserved for the last Saturday of each month. Onto the overview they went.

Dear Reader, I’m lost posts are published on the remaining Saturdays. I write about getting lost at least twice a month, and reserve at least one spot each month for a post about notebooks and planning. I’ve been enjoying distributing some of these post ideas across my empty Saturday spaces.

The year to date on my Substack overview. My regular ‘Letters to Terry’ and ‘Art & Treasures’ posts were populated first, which revealed where my ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ posts will fit in.

I’m filling the empty spaces in my overview as I go along, and I’m already enjoying having this plan to guide me through what is going to be a busy year both on Substack and beyond.

This is all sounding like a load of ‘shoulds’, as if I ought to have a plan.

No.

But I’m evolving, and I’ve recently recognised that this kind of planning is simply a new phase in the journey of being a new writer who has something she knows she wants to say.

Just like the pages of my bullet journal and the kitchen page that runs our house, my Substack posting overview is gently guiding my intentions around my life as a writer.

Because, Reader, I have plans…

Love,

Rebecca

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48. Dear Reader, dear Writer, I love you

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RESULTS OF THE BANANA-PEELING POLL IN POST 50!
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I had a great response to the question ‘Which way do you peel a banana?’ in my recent post ‘Which way up?’ Thank you to everyone who participated!

I was astonished and impressed to discover that nearly a fifth of respondents to the poll peel their bananas from the bottom end!

And it turns out that there are more than just these two ways to peel a banana! These alternatives were offered in the comments:

🍌 Claire V: “My son used to just snap one in half - has to be just the right ripeness for this though!”

🍌 Ms W is up for some experimentation: “As far as bananas go, I'm a stalk kind of girl, although I might experiment with using my feet just for 'kicks.' :)

🍌 And it’s a double deal on bananas for StarkMarkings: “What if I said I cut my bananas in half and peel them from the middle? It gives me the sense that I'm getting a two for one!”

🍌 Manos V told me in his research-based comment using data from primate scientist Katharine Milton that monkeys don’t eat bananas. What’s more, he told me that he was: “…34yrs old before witnessing someone break a banana clean in half and eat it from the middle.”

🍌 Amie M supplied a great explanation for the ‘why’ of peeling a banana the other way round.
1. I read somewhere that peeling a banana from the bottom provides a less “stringy” banana. I have not noticed such. Anyone?
2. This led me to research the proper (and rather gross sounding) term for banana strings: Phloem bundles. You’re welcome.

🍌 And not on the subject of peeling a banana, but serving it ready-sliced in its peel, came this incredible suggestion from Jean: “Did you ever do the trick of inserting a pin through the skin and rotating the banana? Do this several times along its length and then peel, from either end, a ready sliced banana.”
Reader, let me know if you’ve tried it!

🍌 Last but not least, only two commentators on this post let me know that I am bananas! I clearly need to try harder in the eccentricity stakes…! 🤣

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1. There’s still time. Growing up is still some way off, right? 😉

2. We parted company in late 2017. I’m not sad about it.

3. This notebook is no longer being made: instead, there is an ‘Edition 2’. Once my small stockpile of the original notebook (thanks to being a standing item on my Christmas and birthday wishlists for the past five years) is used up, I’ll be reverting to the standard Leuchtturm 1917 A5 dot grid notebook.