Daybook

Ordering My Life

Dec 01, 2025

As a delusional dreamer and national class procrastinator, I must have a system to put order to my days. I understand that to get anything done, I have to stay focused, work hard, and always persist.

My answer is to design a day-by-day organizer in December for the upcoming year that I make using a blank Moleskine hardback 7.5 x10 quadrille notebook. It’s a daybook, with seven divisions for the week that I draw on the verso (left-hand page), and a blank recto that is filled in with all sorts of notes as I trundle through my week.

A finished recto page begins with an updated list of financial markers that can cause me to either cringe or smile. Depends. To the right is a list of the days, the exercise for the day, my blood sugar, and weight in the morning. Under the financial markers is a ‘to do’ list that I call, “Little Jobs.” To the right of the little jobs is a list of stock trades that I have completed during the week.

Wait. Wait. Wait. I can just sense a psychological diagnosis slithering into your thoughts. But you are mostly wrong about me being nuts. My twin disorders are sloth and avoidance. You are not going to find either of those in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5.

You would have to understand that my delusions are harmless, although they populate my mind continuously. For example, I think that writing a weekly original essay on Substack will lead to something, but probably not. It is a delusion. But if I put ‘essay’ on my list in my daybook, there is a fair to good chance that I’ll finish a short essay in time to post on Sunday evening.

As to my avoidance of all things I consider an imposition, I can put off certain tasks until the end of time. Blue Eyes can mention in passing, “What about (whatever)?” And I can actually respond in full honesty, “what about what?” I have completely extinguished her request from some days ago. I have no memory of her original request, or the two or three subsequent reminders. All gone. I love and respect her. I try to hear everything she says. But I am a national class procrastinator. I can avoid anything I do not want to do.

Once I have drawn the lines on 52 pages, I go back and write down the day of the week and the date, 352 times. But something quite magical happens when I laboriously fill in each day of the month. I begin to think about what is special to me about that month and reflect on each month as I write down the dates, day by day.

January is a fresh start. It is a new year, I feel excited and energized by all the possibilities before me. I look forward to it with enthusiasm. But then there are the short days and cold temperatures that counter the good feelings. It is dark when I wake and then it gets dark long before I make dinner. And yet, there is no drag of previous months in January, only possibilities.

I am relieved that since January feels like the longest month of the entire year, February is the shortest. But then I remember one late registration at the University of Maryland and overhearing one Registrar’s employee say to another while holding up a student’s check, “These kids don’t even know how to spell February.” I smile at the remembrance, but then have to consider my fear that younger generations do not appear to care that our government is in disarray.

As I begin to write down the days of March, I am reminded that there is often a March day here in the High Country where the temperature warms to the 70s, the wind is still, and I can ride my bike comfortably in a summer riding kit. I feel like I have made it through another winter like a battered old elk who savors the taste of a small clump of bright green grass growing on the lee side of a rock. And then it snows a foot the next day.

April starts with a day named after me. Somewhere in Jimmy Buffet’s canon is a reference to “Pushing the Fool Button.” Guilty as charged, as I review a number of events throughout the years starting as early as a spring break in Florida where I impressed my aunt by spinning out a Vespa in her driveway with my cousin on the back, and as recently as passing out at a Thanksgiving dinner from consuming multiple martinis. April is also the end of the ski patrol season. It was the time of year when I wanted to toss my skis, boots, and poles into the woods and leave them there. I loved the work. But I was always relieved when it was over. No more always watching for something bad to happen and herding cats.

And then there is May at the foot of the Rockies. In Boulder we are out and about in our shorts and T-shirts with a fleece nearby just in case. In the mountains we are still in long pants, fleece, and in the thick of mud season. A good time to head for Belize or Saint Somewhere in the islands.

We planted onion sets and garlic cloves at Thanksgiving. But we don’t get serious about gardening until June. While our last average frost here is May 15th, we don’t do much with the garden other than admire the onions and garlic until June. Yes, we have seen snow flurries in June.

The tough thought that comes in July is simply, “Where is the summer going? It’s July already. This is anticipating the downhill run to winter, when we should be just reveling in being outside in a beautiful place at the foot of the Rockies.

As I fill in the blanks for August, I am reminded that August is the reverse of January. It is an arbitrary month. Instead of frightening cold, we have Arizona-like heat, day after day. Life slows to a sustainable pace governed by the fact that nothing seems to work well in August. Everyone is away or hunkered down next to an air conditioning duct.

I pause as I start working on the days in September. If there were one month in North America that most of us would like to last all year long—it is September. There is an early morning hint of coolness in the air. The sun is headed south and there is that special September light that makes everything look as if it has a patina, like a precious metal.

October always gives me pause as I head toward the end of my task. It is my birth month and I always write the next number down. That stops me. It is a large number. There will not be many more large numbers for me. A tinge of fear enters my thinking. But then I smile and think, there are some good days in front of me and then the last great adventure. Who knows how this all ends?

Snow is always on my mind in November. Ever since sledding down icy streets in Maryland when I was 10 or 11 years old, to my life in the mountains or backcountry looking up at the sky in wonder at the beauty of a snowfall. Or the wind blowing the snow from the trees looking like billions of tiny diamonds drifting across a cerulean sky.

Still a little overstuffed from Thanksgiving, I am about to finish the main part of my daybook. As the days roll out before me on the pages, so do the memories of Christmases past. Friends and family, many gone now, heated arguments over pointless politics, sumptuous food, trees covered in ornaments, all with a history. Always mirth and laughter, and often snow, magical snow.

I’m finished working on my daybook now. I have wonderful memories flooding through my mind and plans for the next year coming into view. Nothing could be better than this.

END

Have you got an interesting little habit that you are afraid to share for fear be called a looney? With writing this essay, I have found the process painless. Give it a try, the worst that can happen is that no one will talk to you for a month.

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