If you were to look into my backpack, you would find a Rachel Hollis Priority Planner, a Simplified Daily Academic Planner, and two monthly calendars I got for free at the bank.

And they all are sadly blank. Well, more blank than they should be, considering the bulk of them are barely a month old. I truly love planning and making to-do lists, and I feel so lost without them. With that said, however, I hardly made marks in them in January.

Ah, January…the month that was like four years long, but still zipped by in a millisecond. For me, it was a weird whirl of personal and business projects (one of which I am so excited to announce in July!), so I am not surprised I ran out of time to appropriately plan…but at the same time, I am sad about it.

See, I use my planners so often like my journal. It is in my planner where I not only record what I do, but how I feel about it. My planner pages save quotes and thoughts I hear in podcasts. Each day, like a diary, hold the artifacts of my life. If I do not plan, the record of that day does not exists. When pages are left blank, it is like a part who I am is lost.

So, my goal for February is to get back at it. I am going to be mindful about my planning procedures, and do my dangest to make more time to get life down on paper. I know how much better I feel when I slow it down, write it down, so my first things first for February is to do just that.

First Things First is a personal blog series published at the beginning of each month to spell out goals, dreams, and ambitions…find previous FTF articles here!