So. I am a person in dire need of a personal assistant. (And probably also a maid and a gardener, but that’s another story.) I am constantly forgetting to add things to my Google calendar, or am running around the house seeking out an invitation to some event to try and remember exactly what time and what location I’m supposed to be at (usually I am about to head out the door and I don’t know where I’m going!). The problem is that I get my mail and things at home, and my home desktop is currently dead and my home laptop is S.L.O.W. like you wouldn’t believe. And then I forget to bring the mail or whatever with me to work and never get it entered. I suppose that I could enter it into my calendar via my phone, but that takes forever and just wouldn’t happen.

Rationale, Part Two: I love photography and am intrigued by scrapbooking. Intrigued does not equal talented, sadly. Because of my lack of talent, it takes me forever to complete a layout. Given the fact that I take about a billion pictures when I’m at an event (and want to see them all), this means that my scrapbooking endeavor is about 10 years behind. FAIL.

What I’ve been doing in the meantime is carrying around this composition book that I use for work and personal items. It’s only organization is chronological, and I have sticky notes hanging out of it to mark “important” pages. Lots of stuff in there like to-do lists, but not very searchable.

I also have a year-at-a-glance wall calendar on my cube wall at work. I can make highlighter squares around people’s birthdays and write in major events in multicolored pens and markers. I’ve even added a couple stickers and taped appointment tickets (to my dentist) and prayer cards to the relevant dates. But the squares are too small to contain everything that I need, and it’s not portable. Plus, every time I try to get into my overhead storage cabinet, it knocks into the calendar, nearly taking it off the cube wall.

Less than ideal.

Periodically, I’ll hear something about these Erin Condren Life Planners and Google/YouTube them up. They look so fun! And everyone is so creative about using them! So after perusing Erin’s site for a while, I bought a planner! Since I am all narcissistic and stuff, I got a collage cover, so I can see all the pretty pictures that I’ve taken. 😉

Unfortunately, as soon as my order was complete, I started Googling it in earnest, trying to see every possible example of how people used their planners. And I found out that if you order your planner from a referral from someone else (and these links were ALL OVER Google), you could get $10 off your order. So, I paid more than everyone else. Because I was impulsive. And didn’t research it first. Ugh! Oh well.

Now I’m excited to receive my planner and start putting — well, everything — into it! I ordered it about a week ago and it’s not supposed to ship until two-and-a-half more weeks from now! That’s like nearly a month. This is a super-long time to wait. Super, super long. I don’t know how you pregnant women can do it. 9 months is beyond long. But I digress.

In my waiting agony, I will be checking out all of the posts and YouTube videos and Pinterest boards, looking for great ideas. If you have any suggestions, please let me know or post the link in the comments.

Planner… I’m waiting for you! Come home soon!

I could do something like this, right?