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I’ve been dealing with a lot of very small things recently that built up into an insurmountable snowball that stood in between me and my planner system. I’ve been trying to find ways to explain exactly where I am with my planner right now, so this blog post is going to be my therapy session.

Welcome to my free-association about the state of my planning right now.

The Setup

I felt really good about my planner going into the new year. Unlike a certain previous year I could tell you about, I actually got everything set up before December was over. It felt tight. It felt useful. There weren’t any revolutionary changes, so I knew I would be able to use it.

I knew I’d be able to use my planner. What I hadn’t counted on for January, was not being able to use my brain!

We got back from our New Year’s trip and immediately, the baby caught a cold that her grandparents had been fighting all weekend. I had to take a day off work to be with her, and I now look back at that day as the last day I felt fully myself. Thinking, functioning, being productive, and not in pain…

The Downfall

The very next day, there was good news and bad news.

Yep, that was the day we found out we’re pregnant with number 2! But it was also the day I started coming down with that cold.

So, I have no idea what the flu even is. They say it’s basically cold symptoms but worse? I never got a diagnosis, but if this wasn’t the flu, it was one of the worst colds I’ve ever had. I was incapacitated for weeks! I coughed so much I pulled a muscle in my chest or something, and now, 6 weeks later, it still hurts my ribs to cough or sneeze. My doctor said there’s not much to do but let it heal on its own.

I felt completely useless for the entire month of January. I could barely set up my planner every week, let alone actually do much off the to-do lists. I never missed a video though!

The Secret

I kept blaming the cold/flu for my uselessness when I talked about it on social media, but the truth was that I was hiding my pregnancy from you all for another few weeks. I made a video about this in my first pregnancy, but one of the first trimester symptoms that hit me really hard with both babies, is the fatigue!

For the first several weeks of this pregnancy, I have been completely useless. I wake up feeling fine, but by noon, my brain is like soup. It takes forever to get anything done at work, and by the time I’ve dragged something onto the dinner table, and brute-forced my way through bedtime for the toddler, I’m really to collapse and sleep for a week!

My saint of a husband barely saw me for a month because I spent all my free time sleeping.

I’m 10 weeks along now and this symptom is (knock on wood) just barely starting to fade away. I have hope that very soon, I can feel up to an episode of Netflix with my husband without passing out. I’m still so jealous of my sleep time though.

The Dilemma

But I’m here to talk about my planner! In January, while all this physical and psychological disability was hitting me, I should have been clinging to my planner like a scrap of driftwood in a shipwreck, and it never did let me down completely… I leaned on Hermione to get my content out on time, and never completely forgot to order groceries or pay the babysitter.

But something was just off.

I was using my trusty combo of Peanuts Planner Co DR-144 and DR-081, which I really like, but I wasn’t feeling inspired, and as February was coming up, just the thought of building a new monthly setup felt daunting. I decided to try out a new insert for the new month.

My thinking was that if I didn’t have the brain capacity for a DIY planning solution, that I would use a pre-made one, and MySummerTouch was just releasing her 2500 and 2502 inserts, so I asked her to let me try them. It started out well and there are a lot of things about the inserts that worked well for me.

I liked that I was forced to keep an eye on my overall task list every day. I didn’t like that I was missing my weekly task list. But I thought I would just plug along for the month.

You and I both know that not using a daily page for a particular day doesn’t mean that you’ve wasted that piece of paper, right? But it sure can feel that way, especially when your planner system as a whole wasn’t prepared for your state of mind that month.

I’m just trying to say that the 2502 weeks and days insert isn’t my holy grail.

The Future

But this week, I pulled out my trusty PeanutsPlannerCo DR-073 which I use for an Alastair Weekly task list and set up a weekly to-do list for the first time this month.

So far, so good. I think I might finally be getting my feet back under my planner system, and I feel so ready to be myself again.

Have you experienced “planner ennui” lately?