Normally, I don’t post something the day I actually do it. But today, I was especially frustrated because I don’t feel like I’m making progress.
I bought some chipboard so I could try working with a more professional material. I’m still using printer paper for now, as I want to get this down before I start using my nice paper.
I made six signatures with five sheets of paper each. I wanted to make sure the stitching was visible, so I got out the waxed thread that came with my upholstery repair kit and threaded a bookbinding needle.
The waxed thread is very difficult to manage. I couldn’t keep tension, and I think it’s just too thick for bookbinding. I got to the third signature and realized I wouldn’t have enough thread for the other three, so I decided to just sew on the cover and call it good.
And of course…I was about 1/2″ short.
Then I got out some embroidery floss, which is too thick for the bookbinding needles. I was able to thread a curved needle, which seems like a great option for this type of binding. However, I haven’t worked with a curved needle before, and I kept dropping it.
I made sure I had plenty of thread this time. So obviously, it got tangled, and I had to start over for the fifth time. (I left out some retries because they’re really not important in the grand scheme of things.)
I finally got four signatures plus the cover secured. Yet even though I blamed the waxed thread for the tension issues, it was me all along.
Thus, the cover lies flat, but only because the stitching is so loose.
I started this blog because I wanted to share the learning process, which includes days of frustration and failure. Though I suppose nothing is truly a failure if you manage to learn something along the way.
Maybe I’ll do a Tunisian crochet thing next…even though I know I have tension issues there, too!
I am obsessed with baseball. With one team in particular, but that’s not important right now.
One of my commonplace books is solely about baseball — some stats about my favorite players, pictures of their various World Series wins, and the best part: mapping out different pitch types, from what they look like from the batter’s box to what they look like from the side.
I grew up watching my dad play baseball, and honestly, I sure was sick of it for a while. Then, a couple of years ago, I happened to turn on the Friday night Apple TV game. Immediately, the noise of the crowd and the game itself calmed my nerves.
I had forgotten how soothing it was.
So I dove back in full throttle.
I love studying stats and trying to figure out what might happen based on current numbers. One of the things I like about the Apple TV broadcast is that they show cool stats like “probability of reaching base” and things like that.
Though if I were the batter, it probably wouldn’t feel great to see “probability of a strikeout: 60%.” Hah!
I dedicated an entire section of my 2026 planner to my team. I wrote out the schedule, where I keep track of wins and losses. I have a roster that I update when players are injured, sent down to AAA, called back up, etc.
I even made a reading tracker that looks like a scorekeeper’s book: single = 1 star, double = 2 stars, and you can figure it out from there. I write a “K” — which signifies a strikeout — if I hated the book but finished it anyway.
I am sorry to say I have few home runs this year, but several strikeouts.
But that’s the game.
And apparently, there is no crying in baseball!
As you can see, I was entirely too heavy-handed with the mildliners…
I try to use what I have on hand, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get a good template because everything I had was either too flimsy or too much.
I have some waxed thread, but it’s meant for upholstery repair and gave me a lot of problems between the wax and the thickness.
I also have a ton of embroidery thread, but it’s too thin to work with on its own, and I kept shredding the covers.
I had purchased cardstock, but I didn’t get the right finish, so it looked like I had made a construction paper notebook for my third-grade dinosaur project.
I want to make A5 notebooks, as well as traveler’s notebook-style notebooks, but A5 paper, being slightly different from letter size, somehow costs far more than letter paper.
So…I found some letter-sized chipboard and decided to try again with printer paper and some embroidery floss that arrived today.
Here is the setup once I got all the paper cut and the holes poked through:
The next problem was that my bookbinding needles don’t have eyes large enough for embroidery floss. That seems like something a bookbinding needle should be able to handle, but what do I know?
I finally found a needle that would work—from my upholstery repair kit—and of course it broke after going through the first hole.
I found another upholstery needle that did work, finally.
This attempt went much better than the last, especially because I bought a paper guillotine and wasn’t cutting every page by hand. Clearly, I like to punish myself by cutting single sheets of paper one at a time…
I’m pleased with my second attempt, knowing I still have a long way to go.
I also need to remember to hinge the front cover before I sew everything together. Preferably with the Teflon bone folder.
My last post discussed hitting a creative block, which in turn has caused a bit of an internal struggle. I want to keep creating, but I also don’t want to force myself—nothing kills my passion faster than feeling trapped.
Today, I told myself I had to do something. I decided to bind another pamphlet, since it really doesn’t take a lot of time or effort (at least, minimal effort for my current skill level).
I had a file folder lying around that I thought would make a nicer cover than the card stock I had been using. I also wanted to try out my Teflon bone folder.
The folder was a little larger than the paper when folded in half, so that removed the “trim the paper” equation entirely. However, I have not mastered scoring yet, so when I folded the file folder, it still ended up with some weird creases.
I also wanted to try the other thread that came with my upholstery repair kit. That thread is more like regular sewing thread, so I had to tread carefully. I had been using the thicker waxed thread, but it didn’t tighten well and ended up looking really messy.
I made the holes in the paper, and they were a bit off-center, as usual. I plan to make a book-piercing stand at some point, but since I am still practicing the binding itself, that can wait a bit.
The sewing went faster this time since it wasn’t my first try, and I am happy with the overall look.
I love that the thread is unobtrusive.From the outside, the file folder made a much nicer cover than I expected.
I believe I have mentioned before that I find a topic, obsess over it for a while, then totally forget about it.
Right now, it is Baldur’s Gate 3.
I bought the game right after it came out, along with a Steam Deck, played for about three weeks, and then my Steam Deck sat untouched until about a year ago. So obviously, now that I am obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3 again, I started playing it on my PC instead. The Steam Deck is busy with my other game.
I have been reading the D&D Player’s Handbook for the past week so I can get a better idea of how to set up my character in BG3. I also bought Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide because there is some lore I am lacking.
Have my notes evolved into yet another commonplace book? You bet they have.
In a week or two, I will probably be able to rattle off any number of feats, backgrounds, classes, and spells. In two months, I will be focused on something else entirely. It’s just how it is with me.
This is, of course, happening right after I bought a new desk with about twice as much real estate as the old one. My monitor is pretty big, so before, there wasn’t room for much besides a keyboard and mouse.
Naturally, I am already covering the new desk.
I started more Jewish studies, so that notebook is sitting on top of the related binder and my current book. Then there is my garden compendium. I 3D printed two desk organizers. Of course I also had to make room for my cat Post-It dispenser.
And more pens. Always more pens.
I also have a hankering to make some notebooks, but I am waiting on a Teflon bone folder, which should arrive tomorrow. Given the current state of my desk, what I clearly need is more notebooks.
One of the things I’ve realized this year is that I don’t really collect hobbies.
From the outside, it probably looks like I bounce from one thing to another. Gardening. Bookbinding. Norwegian. Citation templates. Herbs. Cocktails. Ancient history.
They’re all over the place.
To me, though, they’re all the same hobby.
I like understanding how things work.
The garden has made that clearer than anything else. Before this year, companion planting was something I’d read about. Soil composition was something I’d heard people discuss. Medicinal herbs were mostly names in books.
Now I get to watch it happen.
I’m seeing why one bed dries out faster than another. Why some plants seem happier next to certain neighbors. Which herbs attract pollinators and which ones don’t. Which vegetables struggle through a heat wave while others barely notice. It’s no longer just biology in a textbook. It’s biology happening in my backyard.
That’s probably why my garden is organized the way it is. It isn’t the most efficient layout, and I’ve certainly spent more time weeding because of it. But separating plants by water needs, companion planting, shade, and other variables lets me see what works and what doesn’t. I’m treating the garden as one giant experiment.
The same thing happens with my other projects.
I didn’t start making notebooks because I thought notebooks were too expensive. I started because I wanted to understand how books are made. Every mistake teaches me something, and every notebook gets a little better than the last.
I originally started learning Norwegian because I had a reason to. Somewhere along the way, though, the language became the reward. I enjoy the grammar, I enjoy listening to it, and I was ridiculously proud of myself for using it in Oslo, even if it was only a little.
The citation bundles might be the clearest example of all. I don’t enjoy formatting bibliographies. I enjoy solving problems, and I kept thinking about how much easier graduate school would have been if I’d had something like this on my desk.
Maybe that’s why all of these projects seem connected to me, even if they don’t to anyone else.
I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.
I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.
I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.
A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.
I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.
Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.
As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:
Baseball
Gàidhlig
Norwegian
One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
Religious studies
Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)
And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.
So how many notebooks is too many?
Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.
I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.
As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.
So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.
Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.
At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.
Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.
I hit Norwegian hard before my trip and ultimately got burned out. One thing that came out of it, though, was an idea I really liked: a language-learning compendium.
Obviously, I started with basics like articles, gender, common verbs, and conjugations. But I also wanted to add things that I knew would help me personally.
For example, I struggle with vocabulary recall, especially when I’m nervous. What I ended up doing was asking ChatGPT to give me short readings at my current level. I would write down words I didn’t know, look up their meanings, and add them to the compendium. Writing them down helps force them to stick in my memory.
I write everything in pencil first, then go back over it in pen. Studies have shown that handwriting notes helps retention, and after years of trying different methods, I know that writing things down works better for me than typing.
Right now, I am diving deeper into grammar, like modal verbs, and writing down common phrases and usage notes. I still burn out from time to time, but I am really enjoying the process.
I am also not sure why I am studying so hard, since I keep second-guessing whether I will ever be able to move to Oslo.
But I know myself.
I just can’t stop learning.
Even if other people think what I’m learning is useless.
I used to see a lot of bullet journals on my personal Instagram account and thought they looked amazing. Design your own planner exactly the way you want? Sweet.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that there was an actual method attached to bullet journaling. I hadn’t done much research before trying it myself. I was mostly seeing beautiful spreads online — watercolor paintings, perfectly coordinated weekly layouts, intricate trackers, and pages that looked more like art books than planners.
Very quickly, I started to feel pressure to make mine look like that.
At first, I tried drawing every weekly and monthly spread ahead of time. I do not have the patience for that, so I switched to drawing one or two weeks at a time instead. Then I realized that if I wanted things like my book tracker in the back of the notebook, I would need to plan the entire notebook layout in advance anyway.
I tried using the actual Bullet Journal method at one point and discovered I hated how unfinished it felt. I wanted structure and consistency, not rapid logging and migration. I know that system works wonderfully for some people, but it didn’t work for me.
The Sticker Phase
While I was working on my computer science degree, I had an instructor who was very into planner culture. She showed me her A6 Wonderland222 planner and I immediately fell in love with it. I ordered one myself and quickly became overwhelmed by all the blank space.
This instructor was also very into a particular stationery and planner sticker shop, which I won’t name here because this is not criticism of that creator or her business. She gave me a small card with samples of washi tape, so naturally I visited the shop and bought a ton of things: weekly kits, monthly kits, decorative stickers, functional stickers…if it had cats, books, or cats with books, I bought it.
Then I found another shop and bought even more.
I hit the Black Friday sales hard. I ordered a Chinese New Year advent calendar and opened the entire thing all at once because I lacked the patience to wait.
As it turns out, many of these weekly kits are not designed for A6 planners at all. They are generally made for Hobonichi planners and similar Japanese formats. So I ended up with stickers overlapping into the next day, which drove me absolutely insane. At that point, I decided I hated my A6 planner and swore I would never buy one again.
Naturally, I decided to try bullet journaling again so I could use the stickers there instead.
That also did not work.
I tried using every sticker in the weekly kits because I felt like I needed to justify owning them. The result was cluttered, overwhelming, and honestly kind of ugly. I also experimented with a notebook that used black paper, which sounded cool in theory but quickly became impractical when I realized I couldn’t jot something down without finding a light-colored gel pen first.
The Hobonichi Cousin
After all of that, I bought a Hobonichi Cousin because everyone I followed online swore it was the perfect planner. I liked the idea of having monthly, weekly, and daily pages all in one place. When it arrived, I spent several hours assigning themes to each month and drawing a detailed book tracker in the back. I was ready.
And then I realized that system didn’t work for me either.
The daily pages felt like pressure. I barely touched the monthly spreads. I ignored most of the trackers. I disliked how few blank pages there were, and especially disliked what felt like wasted space: pages about preserving eyesight and address pages I knew I would never use.
People often say the printed ink is light enough that you can simply write over the daily pages if you want to repurpose them. In my experience, that wasn’t true at all. My handwriting competed visually with the printed quotes at the bottom of the page, and I found myself crossing out dates at the top just to make the pages usable.
Everything felt chaotic.
Returning to Structure
Eventually, I tried bullet journaling again — except this time, it slowly stopped being a planner altogether. Instead, it became a commonplace book. Looking back, that is probably what brought me back to keeping commonplace books in the first place.
Ironically, after all of this experimentation, I ended up returning to the A6 Wonderland222 planner.
Why Aesthetic Productivity Didn’t Work for Me
Over time, I realized that my aesthetic simply does not align with what people often associate with planner culture online. What I actually appreciate about the Wonderland222 is that it provides underlying structure without demanding that I use it in a particular way.
I eventually realized that I am creative, but only if there is some structure underneath everything.
For example, I turned some of the undated daily pages into a baseball section where I track my favorite team’s roster, wins and losses, and other notes throughout the season. I even designed my reading tracker to resemble a baseball scorekeeping book.
That creativity came much more naturally once I stopped trying to recreate what looked good online.
In the end, aesthetic productivity simply did not work for me, and that’s okay.
I don’t want organizing my life to feel performative. I’m minimalist by nature, and I eventually realized that I was spending more time trying to create the appearance of organization than actually building systems that supported my life.
At the same time, I know aesthetic productivity genuinely helps some people stay engaged and organized, and I’m glad they’ve found systems that work for them.
Because ultimately, that’s the point of a planner in the first place.
Baseball schedule – a bit messy, but beautiful to me! 🙂
