E33: Comic Blog Thoughts & Reusable Notebooks

This week is a quick chat about an award nomination, then a nice long talk about my new reusable notebooks. Brief blog updates are mentioned - but I'd rather talk about saving trees.

✖︎ Click here for the full transcript ✖︎

Here are this episode's MANY links:
📌 Infusing Vinegar
📌 Picks of the Week #42
📌 Outfits of the Day
📌 Diurnatango.wordpress.com
📌 Ladyjupiter.com/Podcast
📌 Facebook.com/ladyjupiterdotcom
📌 LadyJupiter.com

Transcript

E33: Comic Blog Thoughts & Reusable Notebooks

Welcome back everybody!
Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio accompaniment to LadyJupiter.com a lifestyle blog where I write about my family’s military life, home stuff, my low maintenance beauty and fashion, and travel when possible. I’m happy that you’re here with me.
Today I’ll share an update on our life as affected by the U.S. military, continue with a blog update, then wrap up with my most recent domestic diversion.

Today in our military affected lives I have nothing significant to update.
Still no word on Mister Jupiter’s promotion, so we continue to wait. Meanwhile I realized that I never told you that his squadron has nominated me for an award. It’s wing-level, which means that my award packet is competing with other spouses in Las Vegas. I am not a fighter pilot spouse with a full time job and volunteer side gigs - but I am good at turning things in both complete and on time. It may not be much, but it’s what I have and it’s out of my hands now. For the record, this award is just a miscellaneous accolade if won. No money, or valuables are involved - it’s just competition for the sake of competition. Usually I don’t participate in such, but I’ve come to realize that I am kind of impressive on paper and that I like winning too. So we’ll see how far this award goes. It may not go anywhere, and that’s okay too.

For today’s LadyJupiter.com update…
I have updates again!! Since we last spoke I wrote about Infusing Vinegar, I wrote and backdated Picks of the week #42 (that I started drafting weeks ago), and updated this season’s Outfit Of The Day post. I’ll talk more about the vinegar post when I get the unofficial part two up - I’m working on it right now.
In my comic blog, I am still posting super late weekly comics. If you’re new here I’ll catch you up real quick. When I turned 25 I started sharing my life in the form of a weekly comic; one digital page with one photo for each day of the week with a short caption. They provided a lot of joy for ten years before becoming a chore, so I decided to end them on my 36th birthday - thus documenting every day for eleven years just for fun - all of these comics are available at  Diurnatango.wordpress.com - link in the show notes! Recently I uploaded the comic from week #563 - which was in March 2020, and I had to laugh because that blog gained another follower, and I simply thought that they should have followed years ago when uploads were happening in real time, versus on an eight month delay like the most recent comic.
But then I had a thought - what if I don’t end those updates entirely (as I previously stated that I would)? What if I just change the scope and frequency? Right now I’m thinking about keeping the same single page with seven photos - but instead of showing one photo for each day of the week, I just show my seven favorite photos of the month.
This would widen the scope of each page to one month instead of one week, and this would drop the frequency to one update each month which is much more manageable for me.
I like this idea because I still love these comics, but the weekly uploads became a chore - especially since I started a podcast - thus sharing weekly updates for your ears instead of your eyes. This shift is a slight reflection of my decreased computer time, and increased podcast-listening time, but it’s also a simple change of creative outlets.
I wonder what I’ll suddenly do in ten or eleven years from now? I hope it’s not hosting a YouTube channel - I have very little desire to be in front of the camera. And as my old broadcasting comrades are aware - I’m happy in production where nobody can see me, but you know that I’m there.
📌 Infusing Vinegar
📌 Picks of the Week #42
📌 Outfits of the Day
📌 Diurnatango.wordpress.com

Anyway - I’m going to stew on it for a little while. I love updating the universe, but I also have fewer things to photograph - especially in this world of quarantines and event cancellations. So moving from weekly updates to monthly updates seems reasonable, and nicer than an abrupt “SAYONARA!” to the fine folks who follow that blog. If nothing else I can certainly try the monthly idea for a few updates and drop it if I want, or keep them going. Ultimately it’s up to me and I’ll keep you updated because I love sharing the updates.

And now for my most recent domestic diversion
A quick update about “Burnout” by Emily Nagoski PhD, and Amelia Nagoski DMA. I still haven’t finished it yet. I’m in a part of the book that’s surprisingly hostile about our world. They refer to the unrealistic standards of women’s bodies and mannerisms as the Bikini Industrial Complex - that I agree is wholly unnecessary - but it’s written with more venom than I prefer to hear in one afternoon. It’s not bad, it just slows down my listening because it makes me a little grumpy, so I’m only listening for 20 minutes every other day or so. But I know that my listening pace will pick back up when the topic contains less vitriol. It’s still good though - I’m learning a few things and identifying with a lot more than I expected.
📌 “Burnout” on Audible

Otherwise my real domestic diversion - the thing that keeps the laundry in the dryer - has been a slight social media break and my own deep dive into the world of smart notebooks.
The slight social media break is just me not reaching out or really speaking to anyone online lately. I’m also just skimming the news and only reading articles about health and wellness. I don’t often limit my media intake, but I am definitely in a better mood when I do limit, so I am social distancing myself from those things for a little bit longer because I feel happier, and that is totally worth it.
But regarding smart notebooks, I first heard about them years ago, but the lack of calendar integration pushed me away - this is because I am just one of many people who wants to write calendar events by hand and have them populate in my preferred digital calendar. So far, this isn’t quite possible - but I know that people are working on it. Anyway - calendars aside, I found a journal whose coated pages are reusable, and can use your phone’s camera to scan and upload your pages to all sorts of cloud-based services. The scan and upload grabbed me first, so I immediately bought two journals - one each for Mister Jupiter and me. He works with people who use cloud-based services, so I was able to imagine utility for him right away - he can write down notes as he needs to, then easily scan and share pages with his team anywhere with a signal.
I on the other hand rarely work with others, but I have found more use in the concept of reusable paper, and the idea of being able to build a custom and reusable planner. This coated paper (that I jokingly call Forever Paper) does require special pens, but they’re affordable and easy to buy online. The ink takes a moment to dry, but once dry it’s smudge-free, and easily erases from the page with plain water on a damp cloth. Right now I am organizing my endless to-do list into categories, and giving each category an entire page. The downside is that the pens and paper aren’t as precise as I prefer, so I am learning to write a little larger and to scale up any sketches if I want to include detail - so it’s a learning curve for a person like me who prefers 0.38 ballpoint gel but is learning to work with 0.7. It’s like writing everything with a marker - but I’m learning. The versatility is really keeping me interested. Right now my current favorite creation is a two page spread (intended to be used with the book open). I call it “One Thing A Day” where I divide one month between the top half of two facing pages, but only write the social obligation that day. So it lists nanny days and scheduled video chats, plus some birthdays or anniversaries. My kind-of-antisocial brain likes seeing the full days as much as I like seeing the blank days. Also, this way I can see gaps, and it suddenly makes sense about why I often take the Kid out on Fridays - it’s because we don’t have social obligations on Thursdays or Saturdays, so Friday is ripe for a little excursion where we can stretch our legs, and only talk briefly to retail clerks or baristas.
The bottom half of my One Thing A Day pages are currently available for notes, because I always have something to write down that benefits my future self. Anyway, I am looking forward to making some custom re-usable templates to make this a truly custom planner. I’ve always loved planners, but rarely buy them because they’re 80% irrelevant for me. So I tried Bullet Journaling, and that was okay until Baby Jupiter joined the family. So now that I have some mental space again, I am having fun making reusable paper work for me. And as a recovering perfectionist I kind of struggle because I don’t have the perfect layout ready to finalize in permanent ink - but I really enjoy seeing the progress that I make each day as I learn what styles or systems do and do not work for me. I like trackers, but I don’t use them, but I do use checklists (especially since I can erase them when complete). I have some pages set to upload to my personal Google Drive, or to email to certain accounts, and even a page that when scanned simply texts me that page as a PDF.
So the laundry remains in the dryer because I am having too much fun with this system. I use a full 8.5 x 11 journal, and just ordered the smallest size to maybe replace my incessant post-it note use. Rocketbook makes other sizes in between, and other styles - including a planner - so if you want space for writing affirmations and mapping out goals, they have that. Definitely check them out if you think best on paper, but haven’t found the perfect planner to fit your life. Spend time comparing the sizes and pages - they might have something perfect for you already, or maybe you’re like me and you need the flexibility of 32 pages of graph paper to write whatever you like exactly how you like it - all with the knowledge that you’re saving trees and can easily upload your work if you need to show it. Man, I would have used the trash out of this in college…especially when some people paid me to share my notes with them. Anyway - here are the links for the Rocketbooks I bought, and the pens (even though the books each come with one pen - I prefer using more than one color, but for contrast, not color-coding). Links are in the episode description, and transcription.
📌 8.5” X 11” graph paper journal (with black pen)
📌 mini dot grid journal (with pen)
📌 set of three blue ink pens
📌 set of five colored pens

And that’s it for today’s show!
Show notes and transcript will be available on LadyJupiter.com/podcast - scroll down to the link for Episode 33: Comic Blog Thoughts & Reusable Notebooks.
📌 Ladyjupiter.com/Podcast

If you're looking to follow more things on Facebook, I am there too! I don't post often, and when I do it's just a quick update. Facebook dotcom slash ladyjupiter dot com. If you're driving or otherwise busy, just pop over to the main blog at lady jupiter.com, or check the episode description for the link.
📌 Facebook.com/ladyjupiterdotcom
📌 LadyJupiter.com

Anyway - I’ll be back next week. Talk to you later, bye!