Any Filofax users out there? Diary keepers?

I am reversing into the future. Going analog again.

I wish I had kept a diary when I was young. All the travels I did are starting to fade away. I tell my stories about them but I am beginning to doubt myself - were they like I am telling them or have I modyfied the stories? And if so - to what extent.

Retiring in a couple of years (at 62) and travel is top of the agenda.

This time I am going to do it! Write it down that is. Enter the trusted Filofax!

I started using Filofaxes at work in the 80ies and kept on up to about 2000. Had quite a few of them - a bunch - and they are still around.

Checked the web and it seams like there are collectors and enthusiasts in that area too - and that some/most of mine are the good stuff.

I have started to use them at work to get used to them again. I have not been writing by hand much for the last 25 years and am struggling to read what I have written...

















I tried to joke with some of the youngsters at work and told them I was updating my calender. They did not get the joke... They just believed me.

I never knew what it was called, but my dad had a filofax almost exactly like the one you have in your upper images.

Yes, I used to journal pretty consistently. I stopped sometime in 2010 about the time I moved to Arizona, and picked it up again in Texas in 2016 until 2020 or so, and then halted again during the move to WA. Last year from from January to October with pretty fair consistency, and started again a week or so ago.

My preferred method is pen on paper, I tend to be more likely to respect the journal if it's a moleskin or something leatherbound. That said- I do have dozens of composition notebooks on a shelf downstairs.

I feel like.... writing with a pen, seems to make me think a bit differently than typing does.

agree… to me at least, jotting things down with a pen always seemed to facilitate a free flow of ideas…
I was floored when some parts of the US stopped teaching kids to write by hand. It’s like 4000 years of civilization being jettisoned… and having grown up on a continent which was nearly destroyed by two major wars in a half century, who knows what might happen to cut off power supplies or servers?
To deprive people of the ability to master such a critical skill seems very short sighted.

Funny you should say that, and @STANDY , was saying something similar. This was my motivation to buy my first Filofax in the 80ies - I used simple ringbound notepads but found that I misplaced them over and over again and just got another one from the office supply room. No order or continuity in what I wrote in them. When buying something like a real leather planner it gets more respect - and as it gets worn it gets "personality". And one can just get a new annual calender and/but keep the important notes in it year after year.

Incorporated in the EDC.