In search of that private moment

MANILA, Philippines - Call me a little old-fashioned. I always prefer to note down plans with pen and paper. I love the practical utility of a personal organizer. The filled-up hours, days, months, and yearly indexed space can either be an affirmative or an intriguing way to know yourself or trace back in search of lost time.

Keeping a diary makes personal development closer and acts as a way to chart out this messy process of authenticating one’s existence. Dating as far as 1921, the chunky loose-leaf binder filofax was trademarked to be based on the demand for “file of facts.”

There’s something reassuring about having a yearly planner — personal volumes belonging to an entire span of a lifetime. I was a sophomore in 2003 and I recall this desktop-sized, squarish and stiff hardbound one I purchased from the Ateneo souvenir shop. The Church of Gesu’s quiet monumentality with Ateneo de Manila University in silver stamping center-aligned the cover, like opening credits. Inside was a program organized that listed 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and a collective “evening” space and nothing else, save for the subtle demarcation of dotted lines.

AA printed matter: Write it down and pause, before publishing your thoughts to the universe.

The last of my Ateneo series was 2005. It was navy and had “Ateneo” engraved in front in all caps. The history of the Ateneo seal with multiple weekly quotations added points of view to the spreads, which now included an extended hour (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and “evening” in two-tone blue typefaces. Not content to have just hours to fill in, the planner offered a compendium of Ateneo prayers, songs and cheers (complete with instructions: “When opponent loses the ball, get that ball.”).

Three years later, I got acquainted with a more exciting and flexible format of a vertical pocket-sized planner. Like the WH Smith slim planner, this one had that international sway, but was a little insouciant. It contained flaps for inserting loose train tickets or perhaps snippets of impulse memento mori. It also multi-tasked as a travel guide and directory with a very transatlantic coherence punctuated with conversion charts, international clothing sizing, time zones, gatefold maps and important exhibition dates at museums from New York to Paris. It was smooth, linear-lined and had a weekly and 365 day fractioning where one could simply tick off days from a very calculated year.

A day in the life: An appendix of planners released by Ateneo Souvenir Shop in hardbound (2003, 2005) and Ad08 Lágenda Del design in stitched adhesive bound booklet (2008).

Making plans and writing them down affirms a vision, if not a direction of yourself. (Perhaps an accompaniment could simply be a blank notebook or a grid-line style for creative types). But life does not happen by planning too much. The best education, if you take a lesson from any accident — rather than cursing or, more annoying, Tweet-complaining about it — is best learnt by being in the moment, in the real thing, by being face-to-face in a classroom setting. Give your tablets a break once in a while or use it to arrive at something meaningful.

Looking back at the pages of a diary illustrate how the present was once a future. Whether it is quite similar or not, it is an autobiographical resource of your identity or interests at a certain time.

We cannot be so strict as to implement everything we note down. To live in the moment, and be able to allow for events unplanned is a way to achieve progress. Achieving progress means not tracing major sites and standard wonders as irrevocable file of facts or a “list of musts.” The sights unseen, not listed by your very wise app, might just be as liberating, rather than using your planner’s ultra-cool recommendations.

With your daily journal, maybe you can focus on being ironic as Jacques Tati once was, “not be so strict with your agenda and take society as it is” and see the humor in the mundane. It’s always a relief to see the comedy in the unexpected.