Stationery Freaks

Rob: 00:00

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with myself, Rob Lambert, and of course.

Helen: 00:05

And with me, Helen Lesowski.

Rob: 00:07

So, Helen, it's been a while, hasn't it, since we did a cast?

Helen: 00:10

It has. We we did have some wild plans for December. We did. But I have been sick, and it's not like there's anyone to stand in, Rob, and you can't talk to yourself.

Rob: 00:22

You can't replace you, Helen. You're irreplaceable.

Helen: 00:25

Yeah, let's go with that. Talking to yourself is really, you know, not hugely well supported, even in this day and age. So yes, so we haven't done that. So all of the things that we had planned, we had some cool stuff, we're going to, we'll do that for next year for December next year, because a lot of it was really good ideas.

Rob: 00:46

It was great. It was great. I was super looking forward to actually, but then you know, you've been ill and life's been chaotic So I think today, well, today we're going to get Yeah, this is this is the going to be the last episode before Christmas. We're gonna think a little bit about 2026. I know you've got some cool stuff that you've been sort of meandering through, particularly when it comes to advent calendars.

Rob: 01:09

So we're going to talk about that.

Helen: 01:11

Yeah,

Rob: 01:11

I might hint a little bit of some everyday carry stuff that I've been doing and a smart planner. But I think it's going to be a free form stationary story edition.

Helen: 01:22

I think so. It's been a while. I mean, it's been a while, A month probably since our last podcast and certainly since we last spoke to each other. So Yeah. Let's just catch up.

Helen: 01:33

Catch everyone else up. And then, you know, we can set about in the new year because this will be the last cast of the year. We'll set about, in the new year, with the standard stuff that we kind of usually do in January because everybody's all focused on the new year and the new me and the all the things. I'm gonna conquer the world this year. At least that's you and me, Rob, anyway.

Rob: 01:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah, New Year's resolutions and you know, new planners and goal setting. Yeah, it's it's that time of the year. I've actually pretty much done mine. I'll be honest.

Helen: 02:04

Oh, no, really?

Rob: 02:05

Yeah, I've I've had a bit of time. So I've, yeah, I spent a bit of time reflecting and thinking about where I want to get to. Yeah, I'm excited about 2026 actually.

Helen: 02:15

I am.

Rob: 02:16

But I know in January, it's an overwhelming period isn't it? You've got options of thousands of notebooks you could buy and

Helen: 02:23

They are advertising them now. I am swamped and I am so tempted. I do not need any, Rob. I spent a small fortune at Markham Fold when we went up there. I do not need another notebook as long as I live, I swear.

Helen: 02:37

And yet, oh, with this thing that I've just seen, it could change the world, you know?

Rob: 02:43

Well, I I've added a few more notebooks. So we you know, just a quick aside here, I have added a few more to my 145 ish collection.

Helen: 02:52

We should start the new year. The first cast of the new year, we should say how many notebooks we've now got. Because I have definitely got more than I had. And then we should see at the end of the year if we can use more than we buy.

Rob: 03:06

Well, I'm not too sure I fancy emptying the cupboards again and doing that. But yes, let's do that. But actually, I did manage to finish a notebook. Ah, which was great. I cheat to be fair, there's about five pages left at the back of it.

Rob: 03:19

So I did cheat and start a new one. But yeah, one down several more added. So yeah, it's still going in the wrong direction here.

Helen: 03:28

I've gone through, I've completed two notebooks for writing. Oh, no, three, three notebooks for writing. And I obviously got the Hobonichi, which is very nearly at the end and I have bought next year's.

Rob: 03:41

There's no switching of systems for you then this year.

Helen: 03:44

No. I chickened out actually. I was gonna switch and see if I could use the Hobonichi Weeks, which is exactly the same really as the Cousin. It has all the same kind of pages. You just have less real estate.

Helen: 03:59

But when it came to it, I just really, really couldn't. So maybe next year? I I don't know. But certainly not 2026. It's not the first half of twenty six.

Helen: 04:12

If I was going to do switch halfway through the year, and regular listeners will know I strongly recommend you don't switch a system in January, because I did that and it's horrific. So yeah, would switch in September when the new Hobonichi's come out if I was gonna stick with that. But there's so many cool ones out there. Oh my god, there are some everything from a just like we get what I've tended to buy from mug and fold those beautiful beautiful paper, beautiful covers, and then just a joy to behold, but completely naked, nothing in them. Right through to really minutely curated, put this here, put this here, dates, goals, priorities, reflections on the, you know, really heavily controlled space, everything in between.

Helen: 05:00

It's amazing what's out there for notebooks.

Rob: 05:03

It is. And that's actually a sort of interesting segue into my latest. And I've been running this for maybe four or five weeks ish. I've got one of those very planners that you've just mentioned where everything is done for you in sort of different sections. And I was so reluctant, I think the word is, to buy it because it was so structured.

Helen: 05:28

Yeah.

Rob: 05:28

But it felt like everything was there that I would have added anyway, if that makes sense.

Helen: 05:34

And that I know, no, I know exactly what you mean. If it's your system or if it's largely your system with a few things that you could do with, it's really tempting. It's never worked out for me when I've tried it, which is why I ended up with bullet journaling, which is why I've ended but up with I suppose I've gone that way with Hobonichi. I've just worked out what I need better. So yeah.

Rob: 05:58

It's one of those where I don't think you're ever gonna find the perfect one, unless you sort of almost build it yourself. Because there's certain sections in here that I just wish were a little bit bigger. Yeah. And then some that were a little bit smaller, and then some that just no need to have it on there at all. But it is very much like you've just described.

Rob: 06:17

It's called a SmartPlanner, and it's from a company called smartplanner.co, very original. And I spent hours and hours on Amazon looking at them all, because you can't really tell from the screenshots whether or not it's got everything that you need. And so I took a punt on this. I think it's about £20, so it wasn't cheap. And so far, four or five weeks in, I'm enjoying it.

Helen: 06:41

That's a good if you're still enjoying it four or five weeks in, I think the first two weeks is kind of like a honeymoon period. But I think by week three and certainly week four cracks start to show. So if you still enjoy it now, I reckon you're probably good.

Rob: 06:55

Oh, I I think so. Yeah. I mean, it's got all those things that you say it's got habits, it's got gratitude, it's got priorities, you know, got a weekly review. Yeah, some of that stuff I do. But fundamentally, it's an a four size weekly planner, which is what I use it for.

Helen: 07:11

You are one step away from Hobonichi, Rob. I know. I'm telling you.

Rob: 07:14

Know. And then at at at the front, you've got this sort of month section where you fill in the months. I find skipping between those two a bit, you know, tricky.

Helen: 07:21

That's the problem with that. So paper clips, can I recommend you can get everything from like these cute sort of, they'll just hold a few pages through to I have like massive bulldog clips for the, certainly for the Hobonichi towards the end of the year when I need these big chunks slipped between and that flipping back some forwards is irritating? But, you know, there's nothing you can do about it really.

Rob: 07:43

Yeah. This one's got ribbons so you can you can kind of go, but it's just I have to flip back through a quarter of the book because they're in completely different sections. But it's alright. You know, I'm I'm the plan never goes to plan. You know what it's like.

Helen: 07:55

I've got

Rob: 07:55

my week and I'm like, that looks awesome. There's time, there's space, there's stuff that I gotta get done. Yeah. Week starts, it's all a mess. So I started in pen.

Rob: 08:04

I've now moved very firmly to pencils because I end up ripping stuff out and I've changed things.

Helen: 08:09

That is why despite all my lovely pens, and I write it for like scratch notes, I'll write in, you know, ink pen, and I'll talk about those in a minute. But that's why I'm on these pilot friction ones, because you can rub out your, your pen. And it's genius, absolutely brilliant. And I struggle to not use it now because I hate the crossing out. Whereas being able to just like erase the problem is great.

Rob: 08:35

And I think, know, this is basically time blocking, it? Calendar blocking as sometimes referred to. And this I think suits my brain. You know, we've talked about this on the cast for years, flipping between to do list and notebooks and calendars and all over the place. And, I, you know, we've talked about this with goals.

Rob: 08:53

I'll have like, 50 goals for the year, you'll have like three. My my my week looks like world domination. I mean, it looks like the to do list of what most regular people would have over the course of a month, even a year sometimes. And I'm trying to get it in a week. And I think that's why it works.

Rob: 09:10

Because obviously, there's only so much time in this planner that I can, you know, fill with things to do. So it is helping me is definitely helping from a time blocking perspective. And I'm enjoying the writing the pages and everything on it actually quite beautiful, very nice. We'll see. We'll see.

Rob: 09:27

I opened to do this for the first time in about a month yesterday. And I was I was very close to getting back into using that. But so far, touchwood paper all the way so far.

Helen: 09:38

Yeah, I I'm not ready to give up Todoist to be fair. I like the recurring thing.

Rob: 09:45

Yes. That's very good.

Helen: 09:46

Because I don't have to remember that it's the third Wednesday in the fourth month or whatever. I can just set it all up and it just reminds me.

Rob: 09:53

Yeah. That's very good. Very good. So, Helen, should we do advent calendars? We've teased everybody with this.

Rob: 09:58

We teased people with this in episode a few weeks back or a few You episodes subscribed and got bought and purchased two, I think it was advent calendars.

Helen: 10:09

I did. I sold my firstborn child. I pretty much extortionately expensive. So I got a bit excited. Last year, we talked about a woman called Martha Brooks, who's a tiny company, and she produced this advent calendar last year.

Helen: 10:26

It went absolutely viral and sold out. But what happened was people on the internet, you know how these people are, they would set up fake versions of this and sell them as if they were hers. And we did a shout out to just say to people, look, don't don't buy them. They are beautiful, but they're not real. Hers are beautiful.

Helen: 10:44

Well, year, because I'd signed up for it, I got told in advance that they were coming out. Do you want one? And I was like, yay, I want one. And completely forgot that I'd signed up for this not cheap stationary calendar. Then I got very excited because Tom's studio, who I am a fan of their pens, think I've talked about them before, it allows me to use ink of varying kinds with a non fountain pen.

Helen: 11:10

So, but it uses capillary action to, and you can rinse it all out and change your inks and just like a fountain pen, but with not without the nib. So it's a little bit safer given that I broke one of my very expensive pens and I can't afford to get the nib replaced. So yeah, Tom's studio came out, they sent me a message going, Hey, did you want one of these? Do you wanna sign up? I was like, Oh yeah, of course I do.

Helen: 11:32

So I signed up incredibly enthusiastic, did swallow hard and swear never to tell my husband that I'd paid that much for an advent calendar. And I still haven't told him. Of course, completely forgetting that I'd ordered the Martha Brooks one. So when the Martha Brooks ones came, it came much later than the Tom Studio one came. Tom Studio came, I was really excited that Martha Brooks came and I was like, oh shit, oh my gosh, I just spent you know, just an obscene amount in this current economic climate on stationery.

Helen: 12:09

However, it has been a joy opening them every day, with one exception. So every day I go into Martha's and I open that one and they're always very cute and very lovely and very it's cute little houses and very Christmassy and sweet. Whereas Tom's studio is a little bit more, I don't know, grown up's the wrong word, but yeah, definitely serious.

Rob: 12:35

There's also things you get. I mean, we allowed to say, I mean, obviously, hopefully, this broke to solve that sort of, you know, this copyright theft issue that she had.

Helen: 12:43

Yeah, they're not worth it for Martha Brooks. It's things like you get four or five, one day you'd get four or five little Christmas cards. Another day you've got, I've got a nice like garland of stars, which is hanging from my study window. And it's so light that it moves with the air currents. So it's constantly sparkling like lights.

Helen: 13:01

It's just lovely. So that was really lovely to get. I've got a little notepad for a to do list, which is woefully inadequate, but is very lovely. And I am using it as a scratch pad, but it just as a to do list is not good. And I've got, you know, paper clips, which is, you know, cute brass star paper clips and those kinds of things.

Helen: 13:19

So she's done some really nice, all sorts of things, not just stationary, but stationary adjacent, know, that kind of thing. Tom's studio has done really well, so significantly more expensive, so you're probably twice as much, if you know, round about that figure anyway. But in there you are getting actual product, So you're getting, I coveted one of their little Field Mouse pens, which has come up already, several pens, two or three pens, I think, in there, given that I haven't opened them all. Again, with things like, I don't know, I had four or five different ink samples. They're not tiny, they're quite big.

Helen: 14:05

And these are available on the websites anyway, but in a whole array of colors. And that's kind of nice. That's been quite fun to get colors that I wouldn't necessarily buy. But, and you've not dedicated, you know, £25 to a bottle of ink, what you've got is a little taster that will maybe do, I don't know, ten, twenty fills of one of their pens. So yeah.

Rob: 14:26

That's good though, yeah.

Helen: 14:28

I've been enjoying that. And there's been some products which don't appear on their website, which is rather nice. So yeah, some recycled products, which have been really good. So made out of old, I don't know, cheap Biros disposable pens. They are crushing them up and they're reusing them.

Helen: 14:47

So you get this kind of marble effect, which does remind me of tie dye. But yeah, I've got a nice little pen stand, which I opened, I went, oh, no use for that. And have used it every day since quite. To be fair, I'm quite in love with it now. It's a bit tie dye.

Helen: 15:04

It's been because of the colors, it reminds me a lot of Scooby Doo. But it's yeah, it's quite cool. So I'm here, convert to that now. Yeah, for sure. Nice.

Rob: 15:13

Nice. So it sounds like the Martha Brooks one is is very sort of, I guess, decorative, very cute, very pretty, very sort of very well designed. Whereas the Tom Studio is a little bit more functional, you actually get things you can, you know, you could add to your stationary collection.

Helen: 15:28

Yes, it's very stationary focused. Whereas Martha Brooks, you can kind of get a pen, a little leather single pen case, you've got a little luggage case, all of which are premium quality, lots of personalization on it. So there's stuff with your initials on it. When you order it, they say, do you want your initials or somebody else's? So yeah, so all of those things.

Helen: 15:51

Tom's studio have got things like, occasionally they'll give you a little sachet of peculiar tea. I had a jammy dodgy tea or something the other day. A QR code that'll let you get through to download something. So maybe something to do with practicing your cursive. You see my handwriting, I probably don't need that practice on that, but allowing you to practice with, you know, all sorts of things.

Helen: 16:15

So really interesting little ideas, but very, very stationary focused.

Rob: 16:21

Very cool. My you know, in my mind, I'm looking at a traditional advent, not traditional, maybe not so traditional, the chocolate based advent calendars that are Yeah. Basically similar to an a four size, a little bit bigger, but they've got all the different windows on it. That's clearly not gonna be the size of these stationary advent calendars that you've got, is it? No.

Rob: 16:39

I'm assuming these are like boxes almost.

Helen: 16:42

They are. So Martha Stewart is kind of slightly bigger shoebox size. And you open the lid, which is beautiful, everything's beautiful. And inside are these little individual, I want to call them envelopes, they're like tiny little three d boxes, so very, very shallow boxes. And they all line up with their, you know, date on there written in letters, so '16, '17, '18, those kind of, so that's really nice.

Helen: 17:10

Tom's studio came differently, so it's in a sleeve, it's navy blue, which is beautiful, I love navy blue, with gold kind of very swirly Christmasy kind of themed sleeve on it. And inside that is a hard box with little drawers. So it's a sort of three by three little drawers. Then in there are individually wrapped little presents. In there, you can tell the date because they just put a sticker on over the top of the wrapping to say this is the date.

Rob: 17:38

Very cool. Very cool. And just one thing there, I think you said a Martha Stewart advent calendar.

Helen: 17:43

I did. Don't mean Martha Stewart.

Rob: 17:45

It's fine. I was just thinking, I'm sure Martha Stewart is, you know, she used be a celebrity chef, was it?

Helen: 17:51

Oh, I think she's a lifestyle guru, yes.

Rob: 17:53

Entrepreneur, yeah. We mean Martha Brooks.

Helen: 17:56

We don't mean Martha Brooks, because I don't know if Martha Stewart's doing advent calendars, they're not right one.

Rob: 18:01

It's not the ones we're talking about. And secondly, if you want to see some pictures of that, Helen, I'm going encourage you, if you don't mind, could you ping me over some pictures of those advent calendars? And I will definitely make sure that they're in the associated newsletter that comes out with this podcast.

Helen: 18:19

That would be great.

Rob: 18:19

You can find that stationeryfreaks.com. And so Helen, any more on the advent calendars and

Helen: 18:25

Well, one thing. So there was one dark spot, Rob, which is opening your daily thing and finding in there a little heavy parcel and you unwrap it and in there it's in its own little bag, but I knew what it was and I was not gonna take it out of its bag. It's one of those very posh, heavy brass pencil sharpeners, which I think I may have discussed before, which lacerated my fingers and I refuse to use. And now I've got another one. I want to do it.

Helen: 18:57

I haven't even opened the packet. I'm like, I'm not touching you.

Rob: 19:00

I'll include a link for that one into the show notes and the newsletter actually, because that was the episode where you Well, stationary accidents wasn't it essentially? We had spill ink, we had all sorts of drug fencing pens.

Helen: 19:14

Yeah.

Rob: 19:15

But also this slicing off the end of your finger with a with a pencil.

Helen: 19:19

It wasn't quite that bad. But yeah, actual harb it did me. So yes,

Rob: 19:24

I remember the last episode when we were actually together in London at the mark and fold, you pointed at a tub full of these sort of pencil sharpeners. And you did keep your distance and you did a kind of look of scorn and disappointment and say that the pencil sharpeners that cut my finger, not necessarily mark and folds, but that style of pencil sharpener. Okay, noted. That's good. You knew what that was and you didn't open it and you didn't do yourself any damage, which is good.

Helen: 19:52

No. No. I took the wrapping off it, recognized it for the, b b trap that it was and shoved it somewhere where it's unlikely to just be disturbed for a while.

Rob: 20:01

But the the the the the day, I did a video for my other channel, and I'll include a link if you're interested in the newsletter. And it was one of these surprise videos that I thought I'd do for myself where I emptied my everyday carry bag that I used to go between the studio and the house, which is all of about 80 foot, and it takes about maybe ten seconds to walk up and down the garden. But what I thought I'd do is actually on the camera, just empty the bag. And you know, that's my everyday carry wasn't staged, it wasn't set up in any way, shape or form. And I surprised myself with just how many notebooks.

Rob: 20:37

I knew there were lots of notebooks because it's very heavy to carry this thing up and down. I think in total, there was about nine notebooks in there.

Helen: 20:45

Oh, man. Nine?

Rob: 20:48

Emptying all the little pockets as well though, there was like a presentation clicker. God knows why that was in there. I don't need that up and down between the house and the studio. And there's all sorts of random pens and all sorts of stuff. It's actually quite entertaining for myself just to say I'm carrying this stuff up and down between the studio.

Rob: 21:05

It makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. But definitely way too many notebooks, way too many.

Helen: 21:10

It's difficult to imagine that you've got nine in active rotation. I mean, really?

Rob: 21:16

Yeah, well, there's the journal, learning notebook, the planner, the scrapbook, the everyday notebook, little sort of inspirational notebook, the ledger that I use, that's seven already there.

Helen: 21:27

Yeah.

Rob: 21:27

And then another couple in there that probably just, you know, migrated in there by default. And, yeah, I've actually added another couple, two tiny moleskin Kahirs to that because each one's for the different YouTube channels. That's full of all my video ideas. I've got camera, you know, it's just a stationary bag full of pens. It's just too much.

Rob: 21:46

It's too much. Don't need it.

Helen: 21:47

I know, it's difficult, isn't it? And each notebook brings you joy. I did see somebody on Instagram the other day talking about his problem with notebooks. He wasn't a stationary person, I sent it to you.

Rob: 22:00

He sent it to me, it's good, it?

Helen: 22:02

He wasn't a stationary person. He was describing how his ADHD makes him have the optimism of opening a new notebook, starting for like half dozen pages and then stopping. And he was just marveling at his insistence on keeping doing this same problem over and over again. And it was very funny because we both feel the same way. Every notebook is gonna be the one.

Helen: 22:23

It's lovely to see so many different kinds of notebooks. It's obviously notebook season, Rob, so.

Rob: 22:29

Oh, definitely. And that video is great. Again, I'll include that in the newsletter because it was Yeah,

Helen: 22:34

he's lovely.

Rob: 22:34

It was like kind of like, that's me, you you open it, you get 10 pages in everything looks neat, everything's awesome. And then no, move on, another notebook.

Helen: 22:43

I really did feel for him. I really did feel for him. I know he reached out and just said, Look, you are with friends, we do know.

Rob: 22:49

You're not alone. In fact, there's an entire community of stationary friends, just like you.

Helen: 22:55

Hi, yeah.

Rob: 22:56

So what else is happening in your world then, Helen?

Helen: 23:00

Not a lot. So I haven't been sick now. I am better ish and I am now going to be thinking about next year, which I've left it quite late, it being Christmas next week. I've left it quite late. Normally I would be dealing with this at the January, December, sorry, and ready to rock and roll in January.

Helen: 23:20

So I think this would give us an opportunity to make our first podcast in January. So our next podcast, I think it would be quite nice for you and I to talk through not necessarily all our goals because people aren't gonna be really interested, but actually talking about how we've gone about setting stuff. And as you say, I am much lighter weight than you. But you are much more thorough. And I think that might be useful.

Helen: 23:42

It's been a while since we've done it.

Rob: 23:43

So yeah,

Helen: 23:44

we've probably changed as well how we do it. Everything evolves. Yeah, I

Rob: 23:47

think so. Yeah, mine's mine's broadly similar. But I think I've, Yeah, I've definitely refined it. Yes. I guess.

Rob: 23:56

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it in January, actually, because there's still a bit of refinements going over the next couple of weeks, and less ambitious, I've got fewer goals.

Helen: 24:06

See, that's what I do. I have less goals, which I completely abandon. But I look back and I try and do that reflection at the end of the year. And that's normally one of the things that we will be doing at this point, which is sitting back. One of our podcasts in December was supposed to have been the reflection stuff that we do, to remind people to stop and assess what you've achieved this year.

Helen: 24:25

Because it's really easy to do something in like February, March, and you've forgotten that it was ever a problem by the time you get to December. And it's not in your list of achievements because you did it so long ago. It's normal. It's really useful to stop and say, what have I done? What have I achieved?

Rob: 24:44

Yeah, let's cover that in January, because obviously, we talked a little bit about the Collins ledger that I'm running. And actually that it kind of solves that problem that you've just said. Yeah, mean, it's short, sharp two or three sentences, not even sentences is literally a neutral capture of the things that are happening. So it might be some of the wins that I've had, you know, publish a video, land a new client, run a workshop, whatever. So it's it's not journal.

Rob: 25:10

It's purely a factual record of everything that's been happening. And so that's really helped with the reflection because you're not scrambling around or having to read through journal entries and that kind stuff. It's literally just a ledger of stuff that's happened. So, yeah. And even though I've got fewer goals, they're actually extremely ambitious.

Helen: 25:29

That's how it works. That's for me too. So I'll set up some big stuff And then I aim for them. It doesn't matter to me if I don't hit those goals, because that is where I'm heading. So all I have to be doing is to make progress.

Rob: 25:43

Yeah, I'm exploring an idea and it's still very, very early. And I plan on doing a few videos and then maybe we'll talk about it on this podcast if it works. And I'm calling it the wallpaper method. It sounds ridiculous, but I you know, me and you do this. We go on, I don't know, Pinterest or Instagram or whatever.

Rob: 26:03

And we follow a rat hole in a rabbit hole of cool old stationary. I don't know whether

Helen: 26:09

you do this. We do. Polystych, isn't it?

Rob: 26:14

Yeah. Like two hours later, you're still looking at Victorian diaries, you know? I know. And and I was sort of really obsessed with this this kind of Victorian style of it's just one notebook. You know, in in a sense, we're a little bit spoiled now with all the digital tools, we can have 10 different notebooks, and we can put a little bit learning notes here and journals there.

Rob: 26:37

But back then, obviously, paper was a lot less available. And so their books tended to be nothing but a time series set of entries. So you'd have, you know, a little mini to do list followed by a journal note followed by learning notes that they've observed or whatever or book notes if they're an author. And so this wallpaper method is essentially using a giant roll of wallpaper. It's pretty clear that's what it's about.

Rob: 27:03

And it's an ongoing time series entry of stuff, learning notes mostly, and turning into essentially a giant scroll.

Helen: 27:16

I see what you mean. So like those, you kind of get the paper rolls that you use for kids on Google. And it's like, just pull it down and give them a new one. You're talking of recording on that, that feels quite ambitious. Yeah.

Rob: 27:31

So I mean, there's a few things to think about. Like, obviously the role is going to be quite big. So finding things again is tricky. So there's going to be a digital aspect to it, there's clearly going to have to be some sort of index to it. And then there's gonna have to be markers on there about what sort of topic it's about.

Rob: 27:45

So you could find all the things that are maybe connected to each other.

Helen: 27:48

Yeah.

Rob: 27:49

And I thought, you know, maybe there's a role for learning about work, maybe there's one about learning about creativity, that are sort of two things I'm interested in. And then I thought, no, no, no, that's even more complicated. They're all gonna exist on one big scroll, and you know, there's some logistic challenges about how to keep the scroll wound up that keeps wanting to unravel itself.

Helen: 28:08

Yeah, you kind of need to have a top and bottom of that scroll ones rolling on unrolling ones rolling. Yeah. You know, talking about keeping that findable, it reminds me of a woman I saw on Instagram who I have saved to see if we can talk to her actually. And what she does is she uses the bullet journal method, but she was saying that if she physically makes something like art or sculpture or whatever, she can see it, it's tangible, but admin and the rest of her day is not. And it was causing her some anxiety is the wrong word, but you know, stress.

Helen: 28:44

So what she's done is she uses this bullet journal method, but on her timeline, she then just color codes in highlighter how she spent the bulk of that half an hour. Did I do admin? Did I do personal tasks? Did I do reading? Did I do So, and I was fascinated by this.

Helen: 29:02

I'll if we can talk to her because I think that is a really interesting way of solving that problem of what the hell did I do today? I was so, so busy and I have nothing to show for it. I have day after day of that flat out and you're looking at your calendar going and there was hardly any meetings. What have I been doing? And you've been doing work, but you can't recall it because it was all admin y.

Helen: 29:27

So you were solving things or moving things or preparing for another thing or, writing up the last thing you did. All of those things count and just being able to categorize them. So maybe if you could do that with like a color code, because you know I love my color coding. Color code that and your scrolling might be easier to read.

Rob: 29:47

That's it. We'll see how it goes. I mean, one of those experiments that could completely be a waste of time,

Helen: 29:52

but I think

Rob: 29:52

it be a good video in it anyway. Yeah, I think you're right though. I was obviously looking through, we get down these rabbit holes, but I was looking at how do we actually remember and I think that genuinely is something about remembering via time. We've talked about this before. If you want to find a note, you can kind of think well, it was summer, I was doing this, it was a week before we went on holiday, boom, you've got your date, Broadly speaking, you can go and find the thing that you're looking for.

Rob: 30:16

And so I do think there is something there around the anchoring around time that we maybe have lost when we try and separate into all these different notebooks. Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't know. I'll stick with it. And maybe in January, I'll have done a little bit more on this and I might have abandoned it.

Helen: 30:31

Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see. You stuck with your new journal idea, your new diary planner, whatever we're calling it.

Rob: 30:40

Yeah. A ledger, that's a

Helen: 30:41

one. Yeah.

Rob: 30:43

Yeah. We'll do a little update in January and a reset of thinking forward, know, that New Year's resolution, we got goals. And I think you mentioned already this, they're being promoted massively, all these hundreds of different notebooks that you can get entire systems all the way through to sort of journals and planners. Absolutely. It's overwhelming, isn't it?

Helen: 31:03

Know. We had that very nice chap on who came and talked to us about travel journals. And since then, have seen a four size travel journals with inserts, which are pretty, they're not just functional, you know, different colors, maybe, but actually pictures, which you know, when you open them up, are in the back and the front of one journal and another form a picture or whatever. It looks like this is expanding and becoming new things. And that evolution is always really exciting.

Helen: 31:36

It's just like, is this solving a problem that I have that I didn't know I had? So yeah, excellent. Well, that sounds like we've got our work cut out for January.

Rob: 31:45

But I think the rise in this is I saw a new hashtag that I've seen before, but I've seen it trending a lot more, which is analog well-being. And I think it's that realization that actually well-being on its own is great. Obviously, that's a huge thing that we need in workplaces But and in actually one of the effective ways of gaining well-being is stepping away from computers. And I think that analogue well-being is really, I guess, spurning on this massive collection of planners and, you know, getting away from those digital tools. I think it's great.

Rob: 32:16

I think it's really good.

Helen: 32:17

Yeah, I think it's particularly noticeable that it's a growing industry. And it's never, you know, it's never gone out of fashion. It's just become slightly more niche. But now more and more of us are out there more and more stationary free. Because as you say, there are so many ways in which we can use stationary so many outlets for creativity.

Helen: 32:40

And it's so good for our well-being in whatever form your creativity takes. Yeah, I think it's even if just to get a grip on your world, you know, you've got your budget or you've got your, you're trying to work out how you're going to retire early or whatever it is you're doing. Those are all forms of creativity. They're all forms of well-being, because you're making yourself a plan for getting to the future. And it's a future you're imagining.

Rob: 33:05

And you're slowing down while doing it. It's Christmas next week, Helen. I can't believe it. It's total madness, isn't it? My son's passed his driving test as well.

Rob: 33:14

So you know, the roads have got a little bit more dangerous here in The UK. So yeah, it's all go. It's just crazy how time flies, isn't it?

Helen: 33:21

It really is. Well, let's hope that you survived the new year, Rob, if you're not out letting your son drive you anywhere. No.

Rob: 33:30

Well, you know what? Bonus Christmas parties are all over the place. We've got quite a few sort of meals out various different things.

Helen: 33:36

And now you get

Rob: 33:36

to Yes, exactly. Guess who's coming to pick us up? It's brilliant. Can't complain about that at all. So have you got any stationary little micro projects or anything over the Christmas break before we wrap up the show?

Helen: 33:50

Well, I was aiming to get my sort of, I would say first draft, it's not really final draft of my novel sent over to my tutor and editor. But it turns out that the end that I was very excited towards getting, because I'd had to work my way through a lot of trouble in the middle, the end which I wrote eighteen months ago, is not quite as slick and clever as I remembered it being. So I have to go and I have to make it work. So it's not ready. So as far as micro projects, it's micro.

Rob: 34:26

Micro. Nice. That's cool. That's just triggered a little thought here. I'm in the middle of writing my squirrel book.

Rob: 34:32

Yeah, I've been writing this book, I was gonna say still ten years. I'm actually I'm focused on it. Now this is this is it. This is the push. And so do you write the ending first and then fill in the middle?

Helen: 34:44

Would never do it the way I've done it this time. So this was my first time of doing an entire novel. And I wouldn't do it like this again. So I have learned so much about how not to do it.

Rob: 34:54

So what did you do? You wrote the ending first. I wrote,

Helen: 34:57

I think probably the idea was during NaNoWriMo before it got torched. I just wrote some beginning. I wrote basically what has effectively been a short story, which I've cut out of the novel now, but it was still there. And then I needed to know how it was going to end. So I used, I was very pleased about how I'd got the ending sorted.

Helen: 35:22

So I was very clear how it needed to end it. So I wrote that. And then all I needed to go is from the beginning to the end. And I knew what I was gonna do. However, it turns out it's not as simple as that.

Helen: 35:32

And I wrote lots of scenes out of order when they came to me And I didn't have the plan written down. The plot was not written down, so I deviated. And where I deviated, it's now inconsistent. So you have to go back and you have to rewrite. That iteration and iteration and iteration gets you to the stage where you just hate the whole thing.

Helen: 35:51

Well, it's normal. It's really normal. And then you leave it alone for a few months and then you come back to it. It's like, oh, okay. So I go away.

Helen: 36:01

This is why I do writing competitions and little challenges and things. So I do lots and lots of those small, you know, short stories, all sorts of little things like that. And as I said, there's some writing competitions and some of which are for bigger lit mags, which I don't do so well at. And some of them are just for fun with getting feedback from the other people in the competition and that's really useful. So I've become a better writer from doing those.

Helen: 36:32

But yeah, the book, the next book, I've already written the outline for a different book. And book two, if I did do a book two of this, I would again write the outline for the plot. Absolutely know where it was going before I started.

Rob: 36:47

Yeah, it's interesting. Reminds me of the episode when we had Jenny on. Jenny Kane, and I'll obviously include a link in the newsletter and the show notes.

Helen: 36:52

Oh, yes.

Rob: 36:53

And she was saying that obviously she gets a new notebook for each book that inspires and connects to the thing that she's writing, which is great. But she also says one of the things that stood out to me was when you finish the chapter is to write a little synopsis of the chapter on each page. So that you can then look at that thread as you go as you're looking in your notebook without having to read the whole guess the copy, and you can see the thread and that stood out to me. And I've been doing that with the squirrel book, which has been really helpful actually.

Helen: 37:24

So I like to do so. So I have learned that I need to do that all front to back before I start writing.

Rob: 37:32

I'll see you do that before you write. I think Jenny was saying

Helen: 37:35

She does it as she goes along. Know she gave a go to my way. I don't know how successful she was. I haven't spoke to her about it. I do know however, that she's just released her first novel of the fish and chip detectives, think it's called.

Helen: 37:50

Cool. Which she's at now written book two and book three. I think she's either just starting or just finishing. I think she might be just starting that. So book one has just been published like only a couple of three weeks ago.

Helen: 38:04

And it's all set, you know, fish and chips and Cornwall

Rob: 38:07

and

Helen: 38:08

you

Rob: 38:08

know, awesome.

Helen: 38:10

It she really writes British country really well countryside really nicely. Yeah.

Rob: 38:16

It's like Broadchurch. Did you ever see that TV?

Helen: 38:19

No. That

Rob: 38:20

was very good. Yeah, a little sort of West Country, police detective series. Very good. Anyway, another one that just very quickly before we close out, this is slightly longer than we were expecting this broadcast. You mentioned that NaNoWriMo, you said it's been torched.

Rob: 38:32

Is it gone? Is that Well, I

Helen: 38:33

think it's gone. There's certainly all sorts of other companies, people sort of writing organizations setting up a version of it. I there was they had a lot of trouble, and I think they handled things well, whether how they have they handled them, I don't think they did particularly good with the comms. So it looks like it had been handled really badly. Yeah, it's just not a thing anymore.

Helen: 38:59

It's not a thing people do. People still do that, but there's all sorts of things that you can do all year, you can do any month, you can do There's so many options out there. And it's just, in many ways, it's opened the whole thing out. You don't just have to do NaNoWriMo, which was only writing a novel in a month of November. Now, you've got companies that are doing one of those kicking off every month.

Helen: 39:25

And a lot of those are free, so they're not all, you don't have to pay for more. That was the thing about Nano, it was free. So it was really inclusive for anybody who wanted to write. But yeah, there are all sorts of communities out there, a really nice one. So yeah, every color was a silver lining and it's opened it out much further and much wider.

Helen: 39:45

And you know, that's got to be a good thing, right?

Rob: 39:47

It's a little bit like I used to do Red January, do you remember that? Mean, it's still going. Where the whole month of January you did exercise every day, you obviously had to raise money God for And I used to do that for years, was actually one of our goals. Way back when we talked about goals on the podcast, I remember saying, yes, I'm doing Red January, I'll do it every year for charity. But now every month, you can do a similar thing to Red January that is for a specific charity, which is great if you're into your exercise because you can do something all year round.

Rob: 40:16

But in some respects, it's opened up. But in other respects, it's kind of diluted it, I think.

Helen: 40:22

Yes, that's possibly true. So it's a kind of, yeah, double edged sword. Can see that's probably probably the same with nano. So you've got smaller communities, but there's more likely to find a niche community that you can belong to that suits you completely. But yes, possibly not as huge and full on.

Rob: 40:45

Yeah, didn't feel like a major special event of the year. It's, you you could do one every month. Anyway, on that philosophical note, might go, I'm inspired now. I'm gonna go and have a look through my squirrel book and make sure that thread and narrative's still there. It's still lot And fun writing you know what makes it even more special?

Rob: 41:03

And I don't know whether they've ever interrupted the podcasts. But I do have a family of squirrels and there must be 800 of them. I'm saying family, there's like a colony. And not quite that many, I'm sort of over exaggerating.

Helen: 41:15

800 sounds like an invasion, Rob.

Rob: 41:18

Well, they don't go into the house, which is fine, but they live behind the studio. And I see them running past the fence every single day. They stop and have a look and we wave at each other and all that kind of stuff. But they occasionally run across the studio roof and it's a metal roof. And good grief, is that noisy.

Rob: 41:34

But it's nice. I'm sort of writing a book about squirrels and I'm seeing them all run past and yeah, it's amazing. It's nice.

Helen: 41:41

Oh, nice. Okay. Well, very Christmasy. Shame we've not got any snow here, but you know.

Rob: 41:47

With that, we've sort of rumbled a little bit towards the end of there, but I'm sure our listeners are very much used to us ramble chatting about stationery.

Helen: 41:54

Yeah. Half of them will have turned off by now, Rob.

Rob: 41:57

I think so. But for those that still remain, thank you. And yeah, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. We do again, we keep checking the stats and the numbers always astound us. We're very, very grateful, very appreciative for the comments and the nice words and the recommendations that come forward from you, our lovely listeners.

Rob: 42:14

So thank you so much. And we hope that you have a really pleasant festive break, whatever it is that you're celebrating wherever you are in the world, we thank you and hope that you have a really relaxed end of the year. And we will be back in 2026 to talk about goals and ambition and notepads and diaries and journals, won't we Helen?

Helen: 42:34

Oh, we will. We absolutely will. Yes.

Rob: 42:37

We we can't start the year without doing something like that. That would just be wrong, on many levels. But if you wanna stay in touch, please do Instagram. Stationery Freaks UK is the handle. If you wanna check out the newsletter, that's at stationeryfreaks.com.

Rob: 42:51

And of course, we've got about seven years with the podcast episodes. Again, stationeryfreaks.com, and you will find something that hopefully interests you and your stationery, niche. And with that, thank you so much, and Helen, have a wonderful Christmas. I hope you feel a little bit better.

Helen: 43:08

Yes, thank you very much. Merry Christmas to everybody out there, whether you celebrate or don't. Have a very nice few weeks.

Rob: 43:16

Indeed, and we look forward to speaking to you in 2026. Bye bye.

Helen: 43:21

Bye.