Moments of reflection and dream
BK Love Letter // September 2024
Hi everyone! I can’t believe we stepped into September!! August was a bit of a crazy month between my trip to LA, catching the summer flu, Frido traveling to Singapore for two weeks, and processing grief while settling into a new, longer-term rental in a little town outside of Asheville.
Below is BK's Love Letter from September 2024 and a little bit of my reflection about the upcoming planner season for 2025. I hope you enjoy it.
If you would like to stay connected between the monthly love letters, please feel free to browse other stories on the Substack.
Greetings from the shifting season in the mountains. We had a few weeks of drought (and very hot and humid) days towards the end of August in Asheville, but now the whisper of autumn is knocking on our door. Afternoon thunderstorms that drastically cool down the daytime temperatures have been welcome visitors on many days here, and I unboxed my "winter" layers from California. (I am sure I will get more serious winter gear soon). I am grateful that the changing season has constantly reminded me that everything (even the challenging situations) will eventually evolve into a new orientation.
At BK, some unexpected seasonal illnesses swept through the studio team members during August. I truly appreciate all our customers who placed orders when our bandwidth was limited and were patient with us while our team members recovered. Everyone at the studio is now back to health (hooray!!) as we enter the 2025 planner season.
I never knew that planner season was a “thing” until we became more experienced in the world of planners and calendars at Baum-kuchen. Almost all companies producing dated paper goods release their new line-ups for the following year in September or October (right around now!). I’ve witnessed in the past years that the season generates a certain level of adrenalin rush in the analogue community. Some people are excited, and others are a little overwhelmed by the marketing noise and the sheer number of choices they need to sift through in order to pick the right planner for the upcoming year. How do I know? Because I experienced a similar overwhelm in the past planner season, trying to figure out the perfect combinations of which notebook(s) to use in the next year. Lately, however, I have had a more relaxed approach to the situation.
Around this time, each year, I reflect on how I have used my analogue tools in the past and ponder what worked and what didn’t—and most importantly, “why.” For example, I was using Hobonichi Day-Free for an open-ended journal very consistently during the first half of 2024, and suddenly, I stopped opening those pages for a good two months after we moved to Asheville. It’s hard to know exactly why, but it might have something to do with how full our lives felt when we were in the midst of a big transition. I was focusing on being present with the experience throughout the day and didn’t have much mental or physical bandwidth left to write at the end of each night. On the contrary, what stayed strong throughout this year has been my A5 size Hobonichi 5-Year Techo and my JIYU monthly and weekly. This is my first year using the A5 size 5-Year Techo (before, I used the A6 size). To my surprise, I have not only documented what I did on the day almost every day but also written a lot more about my inner world, which was difficult to do with limited A6 size in the past. After the initial shock of moving cross country has settled, I am starting to write more on the Hobonichi Day-Free notebook again, so it’s not all or nothing. But I find it interesting to be curious about my writing/journaling tendencies at different seasons of my life.
I love how A.C. shares their beautiful JIYU monthly pages and a story about them not picking up 5-Year Techo as much as they have done in the past. They gently remind us that we can savor our lives in many different ways, and it’s okay that sometimes it doesn’t happen on paper. Trina wraps up her 2nd year of The Notebook People Project. There, you can also find a lot of different approaches and inspiration for how we can orient our lives with pen and paper.
I knead my hopes into future planners and journals. It’s not to lock myself into any fixed expectations. Instead, this time of the year feels like I am on the playground with open-ended opportunities for wild dreams… and that’s why I love this season. It’s a gentle nudge that my analogue system, mirroring my inner world, is always a work in progress.
Whether you stay with what has worked for you in the past or try something new in 2025, I hope you enjoy exploring moments of reflection and emerging dreams.
-wakako
always a work in progress... (as I mentioned:)
Asheville // September 5th, 2024
**This is from our BK Love Letter for September 2024. If you would like to see the entire love letter we sent to our community including links to the new and updated BK artifacts, you can browse it via this link.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection, Wakako. Last year I found myself really culling down my notebooks into just two, and for some reason in the past few weeks I have felt I needed more space. I have decided to move into an A5 for my life book this coming year, with a stack of extra MD Light books to tuck behind my main book for the overflow of each day, if there there is any. I love, and appreciate, how flexibility is so meaningful when it comes to my notebook nest, and how they can be fluid and evolve as I change and evolve. So grateful to be here.
I have used the same planners for several years now (Traveler's Notebook weekly vertical, Hobonichi Cousin avec, plus some other additional ones) because they seem to work so well for me, and I would say I have the so-called planner peace! But despite that the planner season feels exciting, and the browsing takes quite a bit of time...