National Planner Day

To be completely honest, New Year's Day has never felt particularly new to me. The only thing that changes is the third number in the date; I'm still the same age, in the same grade, taking the same classes. 

But do you know what day DOES feel like New Year's? June 20th. The day my sister and I force our parents to drive us to Target and let us spend an hour in the planner aisle stroking the covers of each individual book. Our poor parents have to pretend to not see the questioning stares from Target employees as we carry six planners each and do quality assurance checks by smelling the ink. 

My planners for the last seven years :)

This year was the first time in almost six years I've done National Buy-A-New-Planner day without my sister, and it just reminded me how old we are. All our family traditions are slowly fading into memories: we used to watch every single "School Supply Haul!" video on YouTube before ransacking Walmart and Target in August, making fun of my father as he bought fifty of the 25-cent notebooks. This August will be the last time either of us needs new school supplies. Every time we had a day off school, my mother would take me and my sister to Barnes & Noble and we would sit on their couches for the whole day and fly through two books each. Now, we don't have the same days off, and because of the pandemic, our Barnes & Noble removed their couches. 

But back to the planners. I really wish I could tell you that these planners are neat and organized and that they made sense to anyone (including me). But that would be a complete lie. Even as a baby seventh grader, when my schedule unironically consisted of watching Masterchef Junior and eating salted cashews, I would scribble random notes in the margins and make my friends write me poems. In freshman year, my planner doubled as a brain dump, filled with lists of books I wanted to read and song lyrics that were stuck in my head. In the back of my junior year planner, I re-wrote my Biology notes and drew Economics graphs. 

 

I don't really have a point here. I'm not even really sure why I'm still writing blogposts a week after school is over as though I have an avid crowd of readers (although I kind of do, if you count Jessica, who texts me in all caps every time I post). I guess I'm just bored of watching terrible Netflix romcoms and food-related YouTube videos and the fact that I'm fully a senior now has got me feeling nostalgic. 

I was talking to a friend yesterday, who I've known almost my whole life because we both did competitive math as children. My father used to speak of him with stars in his eyes, talking about how "the numbers just speak to that kid". But yesterday he told me he hated studying and doing math as a child and... I was shocked. Don't get me wrong, competitive math isn't known for its equality and adrenaline, but it's where we grew up all the same. Even though I was always half as good as this kid at math, I look back on my competitive math "career" with nothing but the fondest of memories. So when he told me he hated everything about those days, I felt a fraction of the sepia filter I had put over my past fade away, and I wondered if that's what growing up is. It's not outgrowing your family traditions, whether it be Planner Day or MATHCOUNTS. It's realizing that they were never traditions to anyone but you at all.

Because in truth? My sister probably didn't notice that Monday was Planner Day. My mother probably invented our Barnes & Noble visits as a way to keep us busy and quiet on our off-days. One of my most formative memories, sharing goldfish with my closest friends at a math competition in the fifth grade, has probably been forgotten by everyone I shared goldfish with. All that I have left to prove that these things actually existed is a scribbled out planner with stickers from my eighth grade math teacher plastered all over the cover. 

And maybe, just maybe, growing up is learning to be okay with that, too. So Happy National Planner Day everyone. Even if "everyone" is just me.