JIYU Monthly - 2023 Season Finale // A.C.

Let’s wrap up the year with one last look at the JIYU Monthly. In case you missed it, you can see the first half of the year in this previous Love For Analogue story. Here are the spreads for June to December (so far):

Now to decide which habits I want to carry forward into the new planner. I’ll definitely keep logging the lists of various media (usually books, but also movies, games and shows) experienced at the bottom of each month. I’m also happy to say that by consciously trying to be less stingy with stickers across several different notebooks, I’ve managed to use up all the stationery that had been languishing in storage for over five years. By around October, I was able to let myself pick up new material that better suits what I like to look at in my journals nowadays. An easy way to see this transition play out is by looking at the “palette log”. This is something new I tried in the column view section in the front of the JIYU Monthly. I’ve marked birthdays, astrological events and travel plans as I usually do, but below each month I’ve left a few scraps of the tapes I most gravitated to. It’s fun having an at-a-glance view of my aesthetic mood changing over the course of the year.

Ironically, in 2024 I’ll be limiting my sticker and washi use in favor of making daily drawings in the calendar boxes again. This shift will hopefully address my latest storage challenge: ink samples. Between getting to go wild at the “Ink Sample Bar” at the San Francisco Pen Show, Fountain Pen Day, my birthday and Black Friday (and bearing in mind that I roped my partner into many sales and orders along with me), I’ve ended up with an entire rainbow of test tubes to swatch, write and draw with.

Outside the monthly calendar, I don’t have a set plan for the rest of the insert’s pages. I used 2023’s for all sorts of things: lecture notes, horoscopes, meditation, doodling animals and more. It’s safe to say I’m a devotee of the JIYU at this point, having stuck with the format for nearly every year since 2018, and I think the flexibility and openness of the layout is a big part of why. I know it’ll catch whatever I throw at it in 2024.

I’ll use the last of this space, then, to thank the Baum-kuchen team for designing the JIYU and for carrying all the materials I could ask for to help find myself at home in my journals. I’m grateful to have been able to write these essays and share them with you all for another year. Thank you for reading and sharing this space with me. Keep well. Write on. See you next month.

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Text and photos by: A.C. Esguerra

Where to find A.C. : instagram @blueludebar

Read other stories by A.C. : Here

Bk Artifacts Featured: 

• Traveler's Notebook Camel
• [BKxTRC] JIYU Monthly Planner
• TN / 030 / Brass Clip
• For the Truly Yours customizations shown on the TN, please kindly email us at: trulyyours@baum-kuchen.net or find more info here.