AN ITEM I THOUGHT WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING

When I write on Hive, I usually stick to two communities because of their weekly prompts. This week’s prompt is in the minimalist community, and it caught my interest.

@minimalistliving/kiss-blog-ideas-week-190-dec-13-19

There was this period where everyone around me was journaling. Not just that but having cute planners where they wrote down goals, broke them into smaller actionable tasks, budgets and everything in between. It was aesthetically pleasing to wake up each morning, pick up the girly planner to plan the day and the journal to process thoughts. I watched those vlogs and admired the people who used them. They talked about how journaling was good for clarifying your thoughts and mind. It sounded so good.

I looked up some journals and daily planners online and found quite a few that caught my eyes but the prices scared me. I literally ran so I decided to just use normal jotters. I started writing my daily to-do lists and even financial budgets. For the journal, I woke up every morning and wrote how I felt and late at night, I’d write about my day. This went on for only 3 days!!! Yes, 3 daysss. I was convinced that it was because I didn’t have those journals that were already designed to serve the purpose of journaling. I told myself that it was because my makeshift planners had no prompts for me to work with.
So, I went back to Instagram to solve my problem. I ordered a journal and planner from an instagram vendor, convincing myself that it was the missing piece to change my life. I felt like I would never achieve my goals without this planner that promises a better version of you the moment you touch it.
When I received my package, I remember flipping through the pages, already imagining my life becoming more organised. Time would stop slipping through my fingers like they normally did. I would wake up knowing exactly what needed to be done and go to bed satisfied that I had ticked everything off my to-do. The planner would hold me accountable and in turn, improve the quality of my life. This was what I expected.

For the first two weeks it worked. Or maybe it was just the excitement that was making me keep up. But soon after, it started to feel more like an obligation and was no longer a tool for my productivity. On some days, I even forgot I had a planner of any sort. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Right now, the cover is filled with dust from being untouched on my shelf for months.

It wasn’t a bad object. It was just something that I didn’t need. I forgot that manufacturers will tell a story so that their product sells. A book was not going to magically change my life. The only person who could do that was me with sheer determination and discipline. What would have made that purchase more useful for me is if I made it with the mindset that it was to assist me, make things more organized and structured rather than looking at it as a magical wand that would cause an overnight transformation.

One observation I’ve made is that we don’t need a lot of things that we claim we do. We would never have even thought of those things as necessity if it wasn’t a trendy object on social media. Now, we let the trend dictate our needs and interests but if we search within, we actually don’t need them. We don’t even like them as much as we claim to. We simply just want to be part of the conversation.

If I was to trade the daily planner for a single, empty hour of dedicated time to focus on my highest priority, I would take it in a heartbeat. My highest priority right now is to build my relationship with God. Luckily for me, I don’t need fancy journals or planners to do that. All I need is the right spirit and my bible for the King of Glory to come in.