There’s a pile of them on my shelves: passion planners, diaries, bullet journals, colour-coded agendas, Italian leather ones, Japanese ones from before they changed the paper. A graveyard of productivity promises.

I used to believe that if I just found the right one, the perfect notebook, I’d finally unlock my life. I’d become the kind of person who shows up on time, never loses track of deadlines, and doesn’t panic when someone casually asks, “So what’s your five-year plan?”

Crisp pages. Neat lines. Tabs for goals and dreams. The stationery version of a miracle cure.

I bought them all. Dotted notebooks. Lined notebooks. Planners that could probably manage a small government. Each one promised that this time, no really this time,  I’d get my shit together.

The Imaginary Me

The perfect notebook was never just about pages and ink. It was about the imaginary neurotypical me I thought I was buying. The version of me who thrives on structure. Who remembers birthdays. Who completes her Self Assessment on time.

Capitalism sold me the fantasy. Pinterest boards sold me the aesthetic. Productivity blogs sold me the idea that my messy brain was just waiting for the right planner. 1990s mental health services backed them up.

She was supposed to be in there, hidden under the chaos, ready to be summoned by a 12-week goal tracker.

Spoiler: she never showed up.

What I Got Instead

What I actually got was:

Half-filled pages.

Colour-coded calendars abandoned after week two.

Expensive washi tape dots that stick to everything except the page you meant.

A cupboard that looks less like a productivity system and more like the stationery aisle of WH Smith exploded.


I wasn’t building a better version of me. I was building a stationery mausoleum.

Quantified Self

It wasn’t just notebooks either. I flirted with the whole Quantified Self movement. Habit trackers and bujos whispering that if I just paid attention to myself for more than 24 seconds, I’d finally see that commitment could make me a real person.

Pair it with a Fitbit.

Team up with a Nike+ FuelBand.

Add a Garmin to my wrist.

An app buzzing on my phone at hourly intervals. All of them promising that if I could log enough data points … steps, calories, sleep, water, moods, what colour my hair was…  I’d be unstoppable.

Spoiler: I remained very stoppable.

What I actually ended up with was a drawer full of obsolete gadgets because I’d lost the proprietary charger, three abandoned apps that I’d only remember when the recurring subscription charges left my bank account, and the growing suspicion that the only thing I was really tracking was my ability to fail in new formats.

The Grief

And here’s the part I didn’t expect: I still grieve her. That imaginary version of me. The tidy, consistent person I was told I could become with enough grit, discipline, and neon highlighters.

It’s something that’s come up a lot in counselling lately. Grief and Anger.

The Grief of realising I’ve spent decades chasing someone I could never be. The Anger at how long I believed it, how easily the promise was sold to me.

Capitalised because they’re like the characters from an animated movie, driving me onwards to be handed off to the next stage in the relay race of emotions. These are just the first two in a seven character montage. Available soon in a limited edition Funko Pop set.

It hits in small, sharp ways. The sting of old photos where I still looked optimistic, still thought I’d find my way into “normal.” The ache of more recent ones where the exhaustion is written across my face. That me is suffering under the quiet heaviness of all those empty planners, each one insisting I list my “Top 3 tasks for the day” while my brain shrugged and said “Not today Satan.” Too many empty lists wearing heavy on the soul.

Letting that mythical version of me go feels like admitting defeat. Like giving up on the life that was supposed to be waiting just around the corner, if only I tried harder. If only I could use the perfect planner for four whole weeks.

It’s absurd, grieving someone who never existed.

But it’s real. I spent decades chasing her. Longer than my marathon career ever lasted.

What’s Left

So here I am. Surrounded by half-used notebooks, still inconsistent, still messy, still me. I don’t have the imaginary life I was promised, and I’m still figuring out how to stop mourning it.

But maybe the first step is admitting it: that version of me… She isn’t dead. She was never real.

And maybe the second step is laughing about it. Because if I don’t, I’ll just end up buying another notebook for the mausoleum.

So I ask you to please respect my privacy at this difficult time. The funeral will be a small private service for family and accountability buddies only. Afterwards, we’ll lay her to rest among the others in the mausoleum, the planners, the apps, the gadgets … a whole graveyard of good intentions. And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe it’s time to stop haunting the cemetery and just start living in the mess.