Planner Season Reframed

Greetings from the back-to-school vibe here. We had such a lovely time in Japan during the kids’ summer holiday, spending time with our family and friends and reconnecting with Japanese culture while working with BK remotely. I miss the thick tropical air, the chorus of cicadas, and the smell of the forest with its ancient cedar trees so much. But towards the end of my time in Japan, I felt ready to return to the canyon home and our studio in East LA—to ground myself in everyday life at my own pace. Today, I am grateful for these two oases that I call my home base, even though they are in the midst of a very busy city.

Back-to-school in the U.S. coincides with the beginning of “planner season”, generated by the planner industry and its production and sales timelines. When we started carrying dated planners and calendars at BK a bunch of years ago, I couldn’t believe that I needed to finalize the upcoming year’s planner order with makers & distributors by the prior year’s February or March to launch these items in early fall. At BK, it feels that we are placing less and less emphasis on “selling” during the planner season because many BK team members are sensitive to the stimulation of hyper-commercialism, and we can quickly burn out due to the speed of this season if we are not walking the path mindfully.

Over the next few months, we will be sharing updates about our 2026 planners and calendars on our social media and here on Love Letters. We hope these updates will serve as gentle reminders for you if you are seeking a specific planner to call into your life in 2026.

We are here to help if you are searching for the right analogue system and aren't sure which one to choose from the sea of notebooks. If you are curious about trying something new or returning to what worked in the past, we are excited for you as cheerleaders! Our in-person opening hours and our analogue table will serve as a testing lab, where you can walk in and try writing on planner pages using your favorite pens, allowing you to truly experience what it’s like to spend a year with the specific planner, so that you can make the most informed decision. Most importantly, I will personally feel happy if we can be a support in helping you introspect on your inner journey through a planner/journal, as a tool to see things more clearly.

So here is the reframe of the planner season from me and the BK team.

Welcome to this beautiful time of the year, where we can pause and take a moment to reflect on how we walked the first nine months of 2025. Let’s take a collective deep breath and imagine how we want the homecoming stretch of the year to feel in preparation for opening a new journal page in January. Because the outer world tends to rush us through things during the last few months of the year, let’s take an intentionally slow and even slower step forward today and tomorrow.

-wakako

always a metamorphosis in progress...

Topanga // September 2nd, 2025

P.S. What came to your mind when you took a moment to take a deep breath? Shoot me an email even if it feels insignificant. An important step forward can begin with a small insight.  (wakakotakagi@gmail.com)