A new daily planner holds hopes and dreams and possibilities. Productivity would go up as soon as to do lists get written in a notebook. Meetings and doctor’s office visits would never be forgotten. Weekly menus would be followed.

This new planner would change my life.

But it hadn’t been shipped and I am stuck, unable to move forward. I can’t start my New Years’ Resolutions until I have my planner. I can’t track my meals so effectively and efficiently. I can’t write about my dreams and aspirations as scribbles in the margins.

 So, I wait, forced into a holding pattern.

Someone suggested buying another one until the one I ordered arrives but they don’t understand, I dedicated four hours of my life to reviewing planners, reading about their lines on the page, the thickness of the paper, and the use of inspirational quotes or the even better, the lack of quotes. I found the one that would be perfect, enabling me to move through 2026, making perfect decisions, perfect doodles, and finally loosing the 15 pounds gained at the start of COVID for the perfect body. The planner would bring joy and happiness in ways unfathomable.

But if I did buy an imperfect planner to act as a substitute, then I would be stuck with said imperfect planner. Gazing on it would remind me how frail my plans really are and that having a planner not used for the rest of the year, sets me up for failure, despite having a second planner.

It feels like cheating, and the first planner, can’t divorce me. It has no legal standing. I’m the one in control, scrawling on the pages, placing stickers on the front. It can’t contact an attorney. At best, the lawyer could write on its pages, but it could never respond back.

So I would have to murder it, set it on fire when no one was looking and the new one would move into its spot, like a careless indifferent lover.

I shun the substitute one. Instead, I wait.

And I wait.

And wait.

This new planner will change my life.