Susan Branch How to Write a Diary Calendar

Day by day, year by year, with my Country Diary

August 17, 2020 by katefellowes

I've kept a diary for many, many years now.  In the beginning, every diary was different.  Some had a little lock with a tiny golden key.  Some had pages edged in gilt.  One had a giant roller skate on the cover. One had Snoopy, pencil in paw.

But since 1988, when I received one as an engagement present, I have used Michel Design Studios' Our Country Diary. A thing of indescribable beauty every year, it has always been filled with vintage illustrations and magnificent quotes.  There was plenty of room to write in the events of my days.  (issues that needed further exploration and rumination went in my journal, of course).  Each autumn, I have looked forward to getting the announcement card in the mail about when to expect my next diary to arrive, giving me a sneak peek at the glorious cover I will come to know so well over time.

This year, however, the announcement card was not a celebration, but a sorrow.  Our Country Diary will not be published in the future.  This year, the one I have now, already crammed with entries and mementos, is the last of the line.  Oh, what sad news this was, in a year already too full of sad news.

My first instinct was to go online and beg the company to reconsider.  My second was to look for unused Our Country Diaries from earlier years on eBay.  If I checked a perpetual calendar, I could find the proper alignment of dates and days of the week. (2010's would work for 2021, for example. So would 1999 or 1993.)  My third instinct, though, is the one I'm going with.  I'll return to my diary-writing roots and have a different design for every year, going forward.  To that end, I've begun looking into options and find there are plenty.  It will be hard to choose just one for 2021, but having spent over 30 years with the same style, I know I will opt for something similar.  But will it have a floral design on the cover, or seashells, or famous works of art?  Will it be spiral bound, or have a spine?  Will there be enough room to staple in ticket stubs and paste in leaves and tape in photographs and newspaper clippings?

This search for something new to serve as my diary reminds me of last year's search for my yearly planner.  There, too, a creature of habit, I always buy the same style in one of year's new cover designs.  It is 8 by 10, and thin, with big boxes to jot down every appointment, birthday and reminder.  I am quite fond of it.  And late last summer, when I saw it in the store, I bought one.  When December rolled around, I took it out, to copy birthdays from last year's pages into it and made a horrible realization.  I had not purchased a yearly planner, but a student one.  The pages began in September and ended in August.  It was useless for my purposes.  So began my quest.  It was still 2019.  Surely the stores had a few 2020 calendars of the proper sort around.  Since I buy these at a chain store, I made a circle tour around the city, hoping, poking around the shelves, tidying disarray with the idea I would find one at the bottom of a messy stack of notebooks.  But, no.  And no.  And no.  Just when I'd nearly given up, resigned to a too-thin, too-big, spiral bound planner, I remembered one other store location.  It was late and I was tired.  But maybe, just maybe.  And there they were!  Stacks and stacks in five different cover designs, just waiting patiently for me to arrive.  Whew!  It had been a close one. I'd nearly missed out.

Remembering this frantic search for something simple, I did not make the same mistake with my planner this year and can report I have a 2021 planner ready to roll come January 1.  Just my style, just my design, it matches all my others and fits the bill, perfectly.  If only, if only, I can have such luck finding a replacement for my beloved Our Country Diary.  There will never be its equal, in beauty or quality, but if ever there was a year to learn about letting go of the familiar and making do with something else, this is surely it. The perfect time, then, for making this monumental change regarding a minor aspect of my life.

As long as I have paper, and a pen that doesn't smudge or skip, I'll keep a diary, of course, because there's no good reason to stop.  But I'll always wish I was writing in Our Country Diary.

Susan Branch How to Write a Diary Calendar

Source: https://katefellowes.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/day-by-day-year-by-year-with-my-country-diary/

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