I don’t know how to articulate this feeling exactly, but I’ll just say it and we can work from there. I feel like I’m not part of the planner community anymore. Blame it on COVID or grief over my father unexpectedly passing, it just feels like there’s the great divide between me and the planner community. I still plan. I know others are still planning. But the party went on without me and I’ve never been good at being fashionably late.

Go Wild is happening again and I’m honestly shocked people are going. And that shock kind of shocks me. Why wouldn’t people go enjoy their hobbies and passions? The world seemed to move on and I’m still stuck in 2019.

My sticker business is basically non-existent anymore. I started focusing on other things like my retail businesses, but the demand for stickers left almost in tandem with my supply of new designs and products. I still make stickers for myself multiple times a week, but I no longer see the point to creating new products for a crowd of crickets when other aspects of my life are more financially viable.

The new Erin Condren 2024/25 planners are launching soon and I’ll be purchasing one because I still love them, but all the hype and PR around them completely passed me by. I’m shocked it’s that time of year already. I’ve since been watching some really great preview videos to choose which planner I’m going to get. Which might have spurred this sudden urge to dust off the blog and rant a bit…

I guess I’m just feeling nostalgic. Missing who I was back in 2019 before I lost my father and gained 50 pounds. It’s like I see the planner community outside my window and they’re welcoming still and absolutely present, but I just don’t feel like I can join them anymore. I feel different. I AM different. My planners are still the same. I still decorate and purchase stickers from Wonton in a Million, but I’m on the self-imposed outskirts.

Am I ok with that? Do I want to open the window and jump back into the community? Or is my time up and I’m just holding on to the golden days of yore? It’s no longer second nature to turn on a camera to film about my planners or bring out my phone to snap a photo of a spread. Maybe I just need to come to terms with it? Maybe I’m just lamenting my woes for attention…

Or maybe there’s one other person who feels the same way. Some monumental shift in themselves away from a community they were once so entrenched in. My love and passion for planning hasn’t changed, but the rat race for views and PR samples has. I had my 15 minutes of fame and appreciated every millisecond of it, but I think it’s time to accept the person I am now and how she engages (or rather doesn’t) with a community she once so dearly loved.