Zibby Mag

By Hilary Locker Fussteig

Take out your favorite pen and plan for brighter days.

For nerds like me, it’s akin to the allure of new school supplies in September — the fresh, blank canvases on which the next year will unfold. That forward-thinking optimism and anticipation is what makes shopping for a planner such a delight.

“Over here,” rows of calendars beckon from the aisles at Staples. Their invitation to organize — will you visualize your time by the day, week, or month? — is impossible to resist. Colors, designs, and fabrics beg for attention, and yet we get to pick only one! This is a long-term relationship; you’d better be sure you love what you bring home.

It will come as no surprise that I have been a list maker from youth. Seeing a column of to-dos shrink warms and calms me. But as the years have gone on, planning, and doing what I plan, has taken on new significance, even poignancy.

Five years ago, on a characteristically grey day in November (peak planner-purchasing season) I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Everything stopped. Plans ceased. Meetings, dinners, and volunteer commitments were crossed out without being accomplished, which was unbearable for me. The current of daily life yielded to doctor visits and pathology transfers, followed by surgery and then chemo.

Before I learned my prognosis, I wasn’t sure I was in a position to rightfully procure a planner. Would I need one? Would I be around to make plans and see them through? I might tempt fate by owning a planner, or even just by looking for one. Searching for one felt wrong, I decided. Flat out dangerous. I resisted for as long as I could. Though, as the new year slinked closer and winter doctor appointments piled up without any sensible place to put them, I girded myself and went to the store.

There was both pleasure and pain in finding a navy, spiral-bound week-at-a-glance 2016 planner (month-at-a-glance is untenable when uncertainty looms). I took a deep breath, clenched my fists, and bought it, clinging to its dangling promise for, well, dear life. I filled in my medical visits, the activities of my two young boys, family events, and a few social engagements that I could manage through treatment. I noted these appointments in pencil, the permanence of ink being too risky.

Muddling through the darkness of that winter and emerging in spring, post-treatment, I was ready to resume life where I had left off. I gleefully filled up my book, now shifting to pen, with all I had missed. I would make up for lost time: see friends, resume regular exercise, help the PTA, show up for my kids’ games and afterschool classes. I would live.

Since those days, buying a planner has felt like a gift, and something of a dare. The giddy schoolgirl is still within, but the purchase now reaffirms the precariousness of the future, and the innate fragility of existence.

I took a deep breath, clenched my fists, and bought it, clinging to its dangling promise for, well, dear life.

Last year, as I began my annual planner search, I worried less about cancer (though it’s always lurking somewhere). This time around, in the age of Covid-19, I thought: What am I — what is anyone — planning, anyway? After months of dire news, losses of every variety, and punishing social isolation, it’s easy to feel like there is no future — nothing on the horizon to even pencil in, much less aspire to.

I recall our pre-pandemic days, when a smart phone allowed me to bow out of social obligations with a few taps of a keypad, signaling that I’d be late, or not show at all. It somehow became normalized to cancel, and either retreat or trade up for greater pleasures. What I wouldn’t give to have places to go and people to see — school, meetings, fundraisers, even business trips. These quotidian affairs that we whined about were also the human interactions that structured our days and infused our lives with purpose and meaning. Though we might have griped about our duties, we were fortunate to be able to fulfill them. The larger population now knows what we cancer patients do: Don’t take the status quo, or time, for granted.

As for the events that we sincerely look forward to, the act of planning is part of the journey. A 2010 study in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life found that researching, booking, and thinking about a vacation can actually make people happier than taking it. It’s the anticipation — the open, expansive, delicious menu of possibilities — that excites. Nobody wants blank pages on the horizon. It’s human nature to periscope ahead — whether by day, week, month, or year — and outline a future. What does time hold for us? How will we fill our empty spaces? A planner puts it all within glorious view at our fingertips — a roadmap that serves to both remind and inspire.

While we know that tomorrow is promised to no one, and that there isn’t a known end in sight for the current state of the world, I took a leap last December, and threw my faith into a 2021 planner. It’s grey herringbone, opens fully to lay flat (swoon), and has a few pages in the back for — gasp — 2022. I missed the thrill of the in-store browse-and-hunt, but I am safe, and I am here.

There is a future. See? It’s right here in front of us.

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Hilary Locker Fussteig is a former editor at Parenting magazine.