Midori MD Diary 2022 A5, 1 Day 1 Page Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

I've been using a Hobonichi Weeks quite happily for the past three years, but last fall, when I started grad school, it just wasn't enough space. I work full time as a writer, part time as a librarian, I have two kids with their own schedules, and when I added my schoolwork into the mix, it felt like there were not enough pages in the world to contain my to-do lists. It still feels that way. Last January, when I knew I had too much stuff going on to fit in my planner, I decided I would not upgrade my planner but instead simplify my life. I didn't want to have more things to do than would fit in a normal planner! It was a good plan. But it didn't work. I ended up abandoning my Weeks a few months ago and BuJoing my way through the end of this year. So, what to get for 2022?

This year I was tempted to make the same goal, and the Weeks, which is my favorite layout, also tempted me. Planner season is rife with temptation. Reason prevailed, though, and I stuck with my plan to get an A5 planner--but not a Hobonichi this year. I've tried a Cousin before, and I loved it, but Midori MD paper is right up there with Tomoe for me as far as favorite paper goes, and I think the layout of this Midori MD Diary 2022 A5, 1 Day 1 Page book might be perfect for me.

At the front, there are monthly spreads from December 2021 through January 2023, so I can start early and plan ahead. The weeks start on Monday, which is the only logical way to do it and I will not be hearing arguments to the contrary. Perfect. And then there are 385 undated daily pages, for a whopping total of 416 pages. You know how I like pages.

What caught my eye about the layout of these daily pages was that they looked just like the layout I've been designing for myself in my BuJo these past few months. I've had to resort to the hourly scheduled plan in order to stay afloat and this layout includes an hourly list on the left side. It goes from 8am to midnight, but it has blank space above if your day starts ridiculously early like mine. Technically, there's enough room there to list all the way back to 1am, effectively making it a 24-hour calendar. Great if you work night shifts! Or just stay up all night studying. There are also 7 lines below the hourly section for notes, or if you happen to have a time machine and can add more hours to your day.

What's especially unique about these pages are the margins, which are the real star of the show. All around the monthly calendars is empty space for lists and notes and planning. And the right half of each daily page is blank for sketches, notes, lists, habit trackers, stickers, tea stains, poetry, ideas, reminders, or heartfelt laments. It can be anything you need it to be.

This is the perfect blend of structure and chaos. My life is a highly scheduled mess, and this planner gives me space for all of that. It also has two ribbon bookmarks, so you can keep one in the monthly section and one at your daily section. It also comes with sticker tabs that you can use to mark your months in the daily planner pages.

I've raved about the Midori MD paper before, several times, but I'll restate my admiration here--it's excellent. It's light and crisp and handles fountain pens and inks of all fluidity with ease. There is show-through, but less than with Tomoe River paper. It shows great shading, and has a dry time that's a little faster than many coated papers. I'd still recommend using some blotting paper as a bookmark if you're making quick planner entries on the go.

There are really only two strikes against this planner that I can think of. One, there is no weekly overview. Just monthly and daily. I do like to see a week at a glance, so this will take some adjustment. And two, all those pages means that this planner is thicc. It's a full inch thick. It does not fit in most of my A5 notebook covers. Midori did foresee this, and it has a good cover of its own: a soft, lightweight PVC with a faux leather pebble effect. It's cream colored and minimalist with the MD logo debossed on the cover and 2022 on the spine. It's perfectly fine. More elegant than boring. But I would normally have slipped this inside a Nock Seed case or a Galen Leather Folio--alas, neither will fit. I may just have to cover it with stickers.

I don't expect any book to do the work of reigning in the chaos of my life, but I think this one will make a good assistant for 2022. I'm glad I finally admitted that I need big space to do big things, and I hope this will help me keep the little things from slipping through the cracks. 2020 and 2021 were not good. Very not. "Story of 2022," this book says inside the cover. I can't help but give it a stern look and hope it will be on its best behavior.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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What My 2020 Planner Has Been Through

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

It's been a rough year for us all. No one's come through unscathed. My planner is no exception. Sometimes I go back and look through my old planners, and I couldn't help but wonder what it might be like, years from now, looking back at this book of my 2020 life.

It started off normal. I had a planner party in November last year, where a handful of friends brought their stationery over and we all decorated and prepped our planners for a productive year. Welp. That was the last time I had a gathering of friends, and all the plans we planned went awry.

I have lost count of how many times I had to plan my plans, change my plans, reroute everything and turn it all upside down. When things got scary in March, My work closed, the schools closed--I had to figure out how to watch my kids and supervise their learning while working from home. We thought it would be a rough few weeks, and then we'd get back to normal. I had a few trips rescheduled. I had to cancel hotels and flights. They were moved to later dates, so I rebooked it all. Then my work opened back up, and I had to change all my shifts so someone was always home with my kids, who were still doing school from home. And then all the rescheduled events started toppling like dominoes.

This pattern repeated several times. Everything I wrote was crossed out at least twice. Somewhere in the summer, I gave up. There are about seven weeks where I just stopped writing anything down.

Then my own school started! And I had to live by the planner. There was too much to organize, and too much to remember, and it all needed to be written down, or it would be forgotten--except things were still shifting and changing. Quarantines crept in and shook the schedule again. And on every page are my attempts to stay on track, to keep control. Mostly those didn't work out.

I'm running out of pages in the planner, now. My ribbon bookmark is shredded and it's a whole mood. A new planner sits on my desk with no idea what's coming for it. Do I really think 2021 is going to be any less chaotic? I don't know.

I thought, at first, that maybe I should do my planning in pencil this year. But I like my crossed-out plans, my scribbled-out appointments, my arrows that lead to nowhere, and even the pages where I stopped trying to control the situation. It's all the documentation of resilience and flexibility--the things we all needed just to make it this far in 2020. One thing I will change in my 2021 planner is that I'll leave more open space--room for change to happen.

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Ink + Volt 2020-2021 Academic Planner: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

I left my office for Spring Break on March 6th and didn't return until last week because: COVID. I didn't realize that I wouldn't return after Spring Break, and I left my Hobonichi planner on my desk. Honestly, I left all plans behind in March. Those 2020 goals I set in January? Poof. Gone. Like many of you, I've spent my summer in a haze of uncertainty, not knowing how to set any goals much less have any.

But the fall is around the corner, and I needed a hard reset in order to start working on my courses. After Brad reviewed his Ink + Volt Executive Notebook, I headed to the Ink+Volt website and discovered their 2020-2021 academic planners. "Perfect!" I said. "This may be the thing that will help me reset my life." Plus, it's my last year as a professor, and an academic planner seemed like a little going away (cough . . . you've been fired . . . cough) present to myself.

The Ink+Volt Academic Planner is a hardcover, lay-flat notebook with 280 pages of 70 pound paper. It measures 6 x 8 1/2 inches and is a little over 1 inch thick. The corners are rounded and the cover material is textured but soft. The only branding is on the back cover, and it is subtle.

Two thick ribbons allow you to mark your place (I use them to mark the current month and week), and a back corner pocket can hold any extras.

There's a cover page where you can write your name (and add kitty stickers).

The next two pages provide complete 2020 and 2021 monthly calendars, which is helpful for reference.

Planning for the Year

One of the reasons I wanted to try the Ink+Volt Academic Planner is because of the guided planning it provides. As I said earlier, I needed a reset for 2020, and the first few pages of the planner offered that. Before I started filling them in, I printed the free Mid-Year Review provided in the "Guides" section on the Ink+Volt website. This review helped me to assess where I was as of July 2020.

Then I filled out the pages in the Academic Planner, starting with "Bringing Your Year Into Focus."

The next page asked me to declare a theme for the year that would both inspire and empower me. I chose a line from Maya Angelou's famous poem, "Still I Rise" as my theme: "But still, like dust, I'll rise." As part of my reflection, I had to come up with a Five-Year Vision and key actions and milestones to help me achieve that vision.

A two-page spread offers space for a timeline with goals for the first and second halves of the year. My goals are pretty much the same for both halves, though in the spring one unhappy goal is moving out of my office where I've spent the past 28 years.

Planner Features

The planner is divided into months and weeks. There are no daily pages. Each month appears as a two-page spread with plenty of space for writing down events. The right margin provides a focus box and space for notes.

Next is a page for the month's goals with checkboxes and space below for notes or additional goals.

Each month you choose a 31- (or 30-) day challenge. This offers you an opportunity to create a new habit or try something fresh for the month. In addition to stating what the challenge is, you explain why you want to do this particular challenge and offer a precise plan of action to make it happen. There's a place to sign your commitment (which felt a little silly to me, but okay) and a "Challenge Tracker" to circle or highlight all the days when you completed the challenge.

Prior to each week, you are given a unique question to consider. For this week, the question was, "What are you most looking forward to in the months ahead?" Questions from other weeks include "Are you holding on to things that no longer serve you? . . . What can you let go of this week?" "Hard work and focus can sometimes feel lonely. Is there time for human connection in your life?" "The smartest people are always learning. What is a lesson you can take away from a recent experience?"

I love these weekly questions. They offer an opportunity to consider things beyond goal planning. Contemplating a question you might not think of yourself prior to beginning each week is inspiring.

The next page asks you to write at least three goals for the week and the tasks you'll need to do in order to complete those goals. There's a box where you can reflect and celebrate what you accomplished the previous week. A checklist at the bottom of the page reminds you to do a weekly review of your goals.

Another two page spread provides plenty of space to plan your week. Each weekday is divided into three boxes: Morning, Noon, and Night. If you want to subdivide the boxes into hours you can, or you can simply write goals or tasks for each time period. I thought I would miss not having a "Daily" page, but the weekly spread provides enough room for me to write the things I would ordinarily put on a daily page. The greatest benefit to this approach is I can see the entire week at a glance. This is so helpful for my ADHD brain that forgets anything out of sight.

There's a section at the end of the planner for documenting your achievements for the year and reflecting on the events.

The 70 pound paper in the Ink+Volt Academic Planner is smooth and thick with dot-grid format for notes. From the feel of the paper between my fingers, I expected it to perform well with fountain pens and ink. It does and it doesn't. In my fountain pen test, the paper handled finer nibs and drier inks without much difficulty and with little show or bleed-through. However, wider nibs and wetter inks created some bleed-through.

I also tested various pens (gel, rollerball, felt tip). The paper handled these easily, but both the Sharpie pens bled through.

I decided to do a swab test even though this planner wasn't designed for wet swabs of ink. I know some folks like to use monthly spreads to do ink challenges. The swabs look great on this paper with rich color, sheen, and shading, but there's significant bleed-through.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the paper is that many of the fountain pen inks feathered, even with fine and extra fine nibs. The feathering isn't all that noticeable to the naked eye, but I'm surprised the paper isn't as fountain-pen friendly as I expected it to be.

I'm looking forward to using the Ink+Volt Academic Planner for my last year as a professor. I've already benefitted from doing the Mid-Year Review and yearly planning. The weekly reflection questions will give me something different to consider as I prepare for each week. I think the Weekly Outlook format be excellent for planning. Having the entire week before my eyes will help me keep on top of things.

In addition to the planner, the Ink+Volt website offers numerous free resources, including printable worksheets and blog posts covering all sorts of helpful topics. I've read several of the posts and plan to use the printables.

If you need a reset as August arrives, I highly recommend the Ink+Volt Academic Planner with the caveat that the paper isn't completely fountain-pen friendly. You can purchase one from Ink+Volt for $42.75, but they are running low on stock and color choice is limited. Act quickly if you want one. If an academic calendar format isn't for you, Ink+Volt has their 2021 planners ready to go. Prices vary depending on the series you choose. You don't have to purchase a planner to start using the Ink+Volt website with all the wonderful resources provided. It's a great way to sample the Ink+Volt methodology before you commit to a planner.

(Ink+Volt provided this Academic Planner free of charge to Pen Addict for review.)

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Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!