At Your Own Pace: Weekly Spreads for Busy Days // A.C.

Posted on Aug 26, 2025

Since I shared the sketches I made on vacation last month, I thought I’d talk about a more nuts-and-bolts aspect of travel journaling this time around. Here are my JIYU Weekly spreads from then, which I approached just a little differently from my usual planner pages.

The biggest difference is that these layouts were set up ahead of time in the interests of minimizing the supplies I’d need to bring in my Engineer Pouch. I knew I’d only have so much writing, drawing and “remembering power” in me to distribute between various journals. I took my JIYU Weekly, a separate calendar/diary insert, a slim stream-of-consciousness notebook made of stapled vintage paper, and the specimen cards. (Yes…for me, four systems is “minimizing”.)

I figured the best way the weekly pages could serve me was as a kind of vacation Sparknotes; a shorthand I could reference at a later time, when I’d be better able to document with depth. This intention set the priorities for the pages: speed and ease of use. With that in mind, I pre-stamped and decorated trip days. I left plenty of space to jot down notes and switch around plans as needed. I also used just one pen for all three spreads: the Stalogy 4 Functions Pen. This let me switch between red, blue and black without needing to pack a bunch of fountain pens and ink sample tubes.

Not that there’s anything wrong with bringing a pile of stationery along on a trip! I’ve done it before. Especially when I expect to have a good amount of quiet time and space to write. Or when having a full selection of creative supplies at hand would help me feel more like myself (like a security blanket, but, you know. Made of washi tape, stamp pads and collage paper). Neither minimalism nor maximalism is always the answer for everyone, and what qualifies as packing “too much” depends on an honest best guess of your own pace, expectations and needs for a journey—all of which are subject to context and change. In my experience, I find that bringing “too much” stationery and notebooks on a trip can make me feel pressured to use it all, and vaguely disappointed in myself if I don’t. Keeping it simple where I could on this trip helped journaling stay relaxing and fun, even during the busiest times.

I especially enjoyed adding tiny stickers next to my bullet point notes and calendar as an extra, visual reminder of events and feelings from each jam-packed day. This, too, was another tidbit of creative joy made possible by deliberate limitation: I picked from only two sheets.

Now, as I sit down with my JIYU to help backdate other diaries, looking at the bright, scribbly columns and snippets of memories makes the task feel just a little less daunting, and a little more delightful.