Printer Hell

Property of Stormberry

 My EPSON printer has spent a year - give or take - refusing to print in black. I've been printing stuff in blue but I had enough. So I bought a new printer. Not an EPSON because I didn't want to go through the same ordeal, and my parents recently bought an EPSON ECO tank printer and it decided not to work anymore before it  turned two years old. So yes, no EPSON.

On Wednesday I took my eldest nephew to dinner, to celebrate his birthday, and so I tied that with a couple of errands, that had to do with printing. Specifically, I had to have some documents printed for my mother, so that she can get some healthcare procedures done, and the one place I know of where you can print out things is at the Office Depot. Getting to the Office Depot takes me around 45 minutes. It's not sustainable.

Since I had some surplus money (a financial compromise I had didn't go through), and so I invested that in a printer. A Brother.

Yesterday I tried to install it. It's not the first printer I install, and it's not the first printer I install on my Mac, but this is the first that just don't want to cooperate. Boy. it's driving me crazy.

One of those "planner" times

Property of Stormberry

January could be called "the month of planners", though in the planner community, "planner season" happens somewhere between July and October, depending on the brand of planner or planners you subscribe to. During planner season, people who are into planners, such as myself, hunt down the planners they want to use the next year, and usually put them away until the fated date comes when it's time to start using them and filling them up with annual information such as birthdays, anniversaries, start and end of school/uni periods, tax filing days and so on.

In today's digitalized world, this is not a ritual many people have, as digital calendars (or social media) has all the birthdays already in for eternity loaded and programmed into your calendar (until such a day when you have to renew or update your app), and so with all the other days of appointments, due dates and due-payment days you may have to keep an eye on. Back in the day, before the internet and computers were inserted in every aspect of our lives, you know, when a telephone was always a landline, and stayed on a wall or a table, and not in your pocket, most people had this ritual of noting important dates in the brand new planner or on the calendar. Those planners and calendars, as far as I remember, could be found in school and paper supply stores somewhere around December, and not sooner. And most people spent either the last days of December or the first days of January writing in important dates, like birthdays, anniversaries, payments and check-ups that happened only a handful of times in the year.

Though I do know of cases where people used their planners and calendars to annotate certain events of their daily lives - I do remember I was told I should be keeping the record of my periods when I started having them - but in general planners and calendars were used to know which day it was, to calculate past and future days, and to know if you had something to do that day or in the future. If you wanted a record of your past days in more detail, you've got yourself a journal or a diary, which was a notebook of some kind, in which you wrote about your day. Or so was the idea, at least where I live.

With the era of the internet, you started to learn about other people, and how they did things, what they've got and how they used things. In the case of planners, one could find out that some people did use their planners as a daily log, where the book contained not only their plans and appointments for the day, but they also noted how many hours they did at work, the meds they took, or even a small summary of their day. I guess people started finding different practices interesting, cool or inspiring, and soon we were flooded with ideas of how to do this and that. I imagine that this may be were the planner world got so inundated with different practices and interesting ideas, that it may have given the impression to some, that you have to do all of them. FOMO became A Thing.

Soon you started seeing videos and posts in different platforms, about being confused about how to use a planner/journal, or feeling like they failed with this or that planner/journal, and going through planners and layouts multiple times a year and yet feeling like they are not reaching "planner peace". Goodness, in the 80's and 90's there was no such thing as planner peace. You had a planner you've got on December of the previous year and you worked with that. Your only concern was whether you remembered to check it often, and whether you didn't forget to pencil in all of your tasks and appointments. Today there is such a thing as "planner peace" and lots of people don't get to it.

Back when I had a planner channel on YouTube, I explained my mother about it, and she looked at me like I had sprung another head.

"What is there to explain people about how to use a planner? You open it, you write your appointments and then you check it."

And yet, today, in the era of more information than what you really need, and yet not enough of what you actually need, these are valid concerns.

For a while now I have been scaling back on Social Media, and now I'm off YouTube as well. Through this process I have realized something: I have no FOMO. I have a particular taste in most things, and I'm a little harder to impress, and yet, when I was deep in social media and YouTube, I did found myself wanting many of the things I saw. many I did not buy because I am not so easily convinced (so I went pondering a purchase of weeks and then suddenly it wasn't even that hot), but others I did got (like the six of so Kat Von D liquid lipsticks). After several years of watching unboxings, I finally took the step to get a subscription box, only to discover after some time, that this is not for me. For a while, I was also tempted by luxury bags, and had been seriously considering a Marc Jacobs The Tote Bag, since that was the one that stood closer to my preferred style.

And then I stepped off Social Media and YouTube. And I no longer feel the pull of subscription boxes and all sorts of specialized, strange stationery items that are all the rage. Last year, I went twice to Choosing Keeping in London, a stationery store where people make a line outside to enter. Like at an exclusive club. I went, I saw... and in two visits I spent a whopping £15. Two rolls of washitape and one bottle of ink. I was already de-FOMO-ed. I was no longer wanting a Marc Jacobs tote bag for €220, and instead sought out a €18 Merci Gustave tote bag I've got at the CDG airport, which has become one of my favorite bags. Well, not to mention that my already copious tote bag collection (39 tote bags) grew with the addition of three unexpected tote bags: one from Stonehenge, one from Waterstones and one from The Daunt Books. Two due to bag emergency and one because it came with the books. No FOMO, just need or gift.

This has got me thinking whether much of the issues many people have with their planners and journals and the expectations they set for themselves are due to the content they consume online. Do they really, really need to fill each page of a planner? Do they really, really need to journal everyday, many times, in many different books? Does every little thing has to make it into the planner and the journal? Do they really, really need to have X amount of "top priorities" each day? Do they really have to have to do lists that include things like waking up and eating breakfast? Do they really need mood tracks and reading journals, and morning pages and gratitude, and meal prep, and the-Gods-know-what other stuff?

What would Your planner and your journal and your daily practice look like if you were not spending a single minute on social media and content platforms like YouTube and TikTok? Would you find planner peace or maybe would be at peace with your planner?

End of the Vacations, Beginning of the New Year

Property of Stormberry

 There's something beautiful about ending the year away from home, taking a bit of distance to see things in perspective, recharge, and then come back with fresh energies. I love being in Europe, but my life has lead me to find my chances to work and earn a living outside my beloved continent. That income is the one that made it possible for me to save up and build my house, to be able to pay my debts, and to visit my darling Europe. I really love this place.

I'm writing this in the last minutes I'll spend at the hotel (less than an hour), and I would love to, at least, start journaling a little bit too, all before I have to go across the street, buy a new Navigo card, a new One Day Paris Visit Pass, because yesterday I lost my card. That really got to my nerves. I know, I know, there are larger problems to have, than having lost a public transport card you just recharged with €45,40 (a two day Paris Visit Pass), and now having to pay €33 or so for the card (€2,00) and the one day pass. Why one day and not just one ticket? Because I like being sure I am covered for the day, even if I only have to go from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaule. I like to be on the safe side. 

I believe the card must have slipped out of my pocket when I put my phone in the same pocket and then pulled it out. Because the card is really gone.

Not having that card ruined a few things for me yesterday. I had plans and once I found my card missing, not only I didn't feel like doing them, at my age (that would be 50 years-old) walking that much, in winter is not as feasible as it used to be when I was 40. Now I like to wander, yes, but having a public transport card in my pocket that can take me back to the hotel when I'm too tired to make another step.

My plans had included going to Foucher, the chocolate shop, to get some chocolate and candied fruit for my mom, and then find a LEGO store to see if I can get a particular LEGO my brother wanted, but I forgot to buy in Budapest. Or check if it was already available. From the hotel, I decided to walk to the chocolate shop (a 31 minute walk that felt like 45 minutes), since the but I was counting on was not available due to construction work on the street. So, at that moment I may have had the card in my pocket, or maybe had already lost it. I went to the chocolate store, bought the chocolates, and when I was out and started looking for my Navigo card to have it ready for swapping at the Metro gates, I noticed it was nowhere to be found. That's when all got pear shaped. 

My next stop would have been Châtelet-Les Halles, where the commercial center was where the LEGO store was... as well as a FNAC. It was going to be a look-for-LEGOs-check-more-books kind of trip. I had no chance but to walk back.

That walk back felt annoying and long and more tiring. Though I logically knew that I could buy a new Navigo Card, that I could recharge it with a new Paris Visit Pass, even again a 2 day one, and honestly €45,40 isn't that steep of a price I couldn't afford, it felt like a catastrophe and ruined my mood. I went back to the hotel, bought food and holed up in my room, annoyed. It was funny because I was anxious about getting that big LEGO for my brother, and how would I get it through customs at the airport, as it surely has no "cabin luggage" size. Now I was off that task because I wasn't getting the LEGO, and still, I felt upset. I felt upset because of the card, and for disappointing my brother. Not like he can't buy the LEGO by himself, and all he wants is to have it before it arrives to Costa Rica, and not like I have the moral obligation to supply my brother with huge LEGOs every time I travel. Gods, I am not a courier! And still, my mood was ruined.

How many times have something small, logically irrelevant ruined your mood? Maybe more times that you care to remember. Through my conversations with psychologists, I realize I tend to rationalize a lot, and my first instinct usually is to think things through rationally. Well, I'm an economist, I work with numbers. However, there are times when logic doesn't help and may even make things worse, for instance when something small, irrelevant gets the best of you. Why bother so much for something that can be fixed so easily? No, I don't have €45,40 laying around idly, and yes, that is still money, BUT the point is that, if there was a real need, like the train is leaving me and I have to jump on it in that moment, I could have paid it again, and only be mildly annoyed about having lost the first card. So, if it was so "grave" why wasn't I going to the next station, look for a ticket seller and getting one? Because the point wasn't rational, it was emotional. I was upset I would not make my brother happy. I was upset he would be sad because I didn't get him the LEGO he wanted.

I was annoyed for the one logical, rational, material little detail - the Navigo Card and the pass already paid and lost - and getting riled up because it was so small and irrelevant and yet, I was thinking it was making me upset. But I wasn't really upset for the card, but concentrating on the card was easier that facing my feelings: I was upset I was disappointing my brother. Once I was ready and willing to face that, I could start working on feeling better, and I will. I still have to work on stop rationalizing everything, accepting that's how I feel and knowing that the feeling will be over once I see him, he makes a sad face and then we will move on. And the world won't end.

Sometimes it is worth to think a little bit deeper about what annoys us, give ourselves time and be willing to ask ourselves not from the logical, rational perspective, but from the emotional one. We are, after all, also emotional beings. All of us.