Let your intention be as light as a feather and trust your intuition, with 5-year Techo

I have been writing letters to each kid for as long as I can remember. I think… maybe 11 years??? I shared about this analogue ritual in the past as an ever-evolving story. Who knew that something that started back in 2014 with an intention as light as a feather could become something so long-lasting…

In our family history of “Dear Satchi & Coco” ritual, I have used all kinds of notebooks, from MD 1-Day 1-Page, TN refills, Hobonichi, to everything in between. I really liked the notebook that had monthly spreads as well as daily pages, so I could use the monthly spreads as an overview of highlights in our kids’ activities. These activities had more variance when we were homeschooling, but now that they go to school during the week, it seems a bit redundant in entries. I also struggled with pre-dated journals because there were days I sometimes skipped writing for different reasons.

So at the end of last year, I settled on the idea of starting an individual 5-year journal as a way to keep writing letters for each kid. When I brought up the idea, Coco reminded me that Satchi will be 19 years old (!!!) in 5 years with a comment, “Are you sure Satchi wants letters from you when she is 19?? Isn’t that a bit old for that??” Honestly, I don’t have an answer to her question because I have never been a mom to a 19-year-old “yet”. Maybe she will be very tired of it, or maybe not? The size of the dedicated space for each entry felt well-suited for how much I usually ended up wanting to write. And I love the extra flexible space I get on the right side of the spread - perfect for photos, letters, and extra-long entries.

I also thought a 5-year Techo for this might work out because if I miss a day or two (or a week) in one year, I can simply fill in the blank space during the following year, with an entry taking up more space than it was designated for. I have done this with my own 5-year journaling practice. It might bother some people because it does feel like I’m breaking a made-up rule of dated notebooks. Still, if I change the color of the ink I use each year (which naturally happens anyway), it’s easy to distinguish which year the entry is meant for when I flip back the pages.

The only downside has been the weight of the notebooks when we travel. So far, between my travel backpack and Frido’s, I have taken all three of the 5-year Techo to Denver, Europe, and Japan. It is lovely to have a trace of impressions from these travels left behind on pages. But it does feel like we are towing extra bricks in our carry-on. I think, for now, we will keep traveling with them, especially because we don’t travel as much as we used to as a family. But it is definitely something to consider.

For my personal 5-year Techo, I am in year two of the current notebook, marking year seventeen (!!!) of keeping this kind of long-term journal. For the first 10 years, I used a slightly larger than A5-size 10-year journal from Manufactum, which I picked up also with a very light intention (or I should say with pure “intuition” at the time) while visiting our family in Hamburg. I was just about to turn 30. Since then, I have used A6-size 5-year Techo from Hobonichi, and then moved to A5 size for the last two years. Something shifted when I transitioned from an A6 to an A5-sized notebook with a leather cover. My daily entries used to be a quick summary of what I did on the day as a way to log our activities and external events. I still do that too, but when I flip through my past entries on the current notebook, my focus on writing has become more about an internal landscape, which I used to practice in a separate notebook. Instead of carrying yet another notebook, I consolidated them in my 5-year journal.

Here is a list of stories I wrote about a long-term journal in the past, in case you might be interested.

• Starting the new year with Hobonichi 5-Year Techo

• Layers of Happiness in the 5-year journal

• Keep Writing

I like using the year overview at the beginning of the book to color-code our travel and important milestones. I think I will mark the same for the kids’ 5-year-Techo, as they will start traveling with their school for nature expeditions. Coco heads out to her first class expedition next week, and Satchi will be out in the wilderness for nearly 40 days during her first year of high school. (Whooping 160 days of outdoor adventures and learning in the next four years!!) I hear that past high school graduates from our kids’ school consider their expedition experiences as one of the most cherished memories from their education. Wouldn’t it be so fun for the kids to look back and have all of their expeditions marked in one place?

To me, the most magical aspect of the long-term journal, like a 5-year Techo, is how I can lean into the way I feel about certain past events, especially the challenging ones. I experienced this during the processing of the pandemic's emotional impact in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Without thinking too heavily, I jot down thoughts and events in my 5-year journal as the onset of the pandemic was unfolding in the spring of 2020. I circled back to the same page in 2021, as this kind of long-term journal naturally encourages writers to do. I was shocked to feel how much residue from the spring of 2020 was still left in me, unresolved. You might know the somatic sensation that’s unique to you when this happens… To me, it feels like a subtle static or friction in my heart when I read the entry of an event that is unresolved within me. But over the course of the following 5 years, the friction towards the spring of 2020 had lessened and eventually became unnoticeable when I opened the same page.

I’m experiencing a similar situation with my current 5-year journal. Last year, around this time, was particularly challenging for our family between the relocation to Asheville, experiencing a hurricane, and then finding our way back to the canyon. It’s difficult for me to read last year’s entries from these months right now because they hold a lot of heartache we were experiencing - an emotional residue from the time. I am so grateful for where we are today, and I know, eventually, that visiting and reflecting on the same pages will get lighter… so I am leaning into trusting the process. And that is such a power.

I know that this kind of journaling is not for everyone. We had a BK team meeting this week where we talked about just that. And that’s okay if the long-term notebook is not for your analogue style. That’s what makes you special and unique;)

But if you are considering bringing the practice of long-term journaling into your everyday life, my advice will be, “don’t take it too seriously”.

Let your intention be as light as a feather…, and trust your intuition.