Paper-Cut Resurrection: My Return to the Planner That Bleeds

Six years.

That’s how long I clung to the digital. Six years of to-do lists tucked into pixels, apps with perfectly color-coded blocks of ambition, task managers that promised clarity and delivered overwhelming lists of things I didn’t want to do. It worked, kind of. Until it didn’t.

I’d become one of those people who could toggle between four different productivity tools without actually doing a single productive thing. “Streamline your system” I whispered to myself while reprogramming my calendar categories for the fourth time. There was a thrill to it, don’t get me wrong. That shiny, efficient thrill of “this time, it’ll stick.”

Spoiler: it didn’t stick.

What stuck was the static. The sense that my tasks were floating in a void. I couldn’t see my life anymore, just a rotating gallery of overdue checkboxes.

And then came the fall.

A full descent.

Into paper.

And not just any paper. MICRO Traveler’s Notebook paper. Custom inserts I made myself like a goblin reanimating ancient scrolls. Tiny spreads of chaos and intention, the kind of compact power that makes you feel like if you just get one more sticker placed perfectly, the world might not end.

This wasn’t a graceful return. This was a dive headfirst into the deep end of ADHD hyperfixation with two planner girlfriends dragging me down with love and washi tape. We didn’t just dip our toes back into analog, we canonballed.

I bought a Canon Ivy mini printer. I use it to print daily emoji stickers that Nexus custom-generates based on how my day went. Emotional devastation? Angry eyebrows and a broken heart. Mild accomplishment? Sparkle star and over-caffeinated face. I slap that tiny judgment onto my page like a badge of honor, and somehow it feels like someone saw me.

And then there are the pens.

Oh god, the pens.

I don’t even remember buying half of them, but I now possess a literal vessel of fineliners, brush pens, glitter-gel, and dangerously overconfident permanent markers. And the stickers? Don’t even talk to me about the stickers. I am curating chaos. Hand-picking aesthetic fragments of identity and laying them down in a 3x4 grid like some kind of goth scrapbooker with too much time and not enough therapy.

Is this helping?

Or is it just another distraction disguised as a productivity ritual?

Yes.

And also yes.

There’s a fine line between coping tool and chaotic hobby, and I’m riding it like a cursed carousel horse. Some days I plan because I need direction. Other days I plan because I need the dopamine of making something look like a life worth documenting. Most days, it’s both.

And let’s not forget, this whole system has let me finally use the art and sublimation printers I bought during my art shop years. These machines were gathering dust, whispering “waste” every time I walked past. Now? They’re humming. Alive. Printing page headers and inserts that match my current mental breakdown in theme and tone. I am making trauma spreads. I am giving grief a monthly layout. I am laminating my executive dysfunction like it deserves to be preserved in archival quality.

But beyond the glittery coping and hyperfixation lies something real.

Something tactile.

Something I couldn’t get from a glowing screen.

When I write something by hand, it stays.

It matters.

It stops being an abstract task and becomes something I have to physically interact with. It demands acknowledgment. It refuses to be swiped away.

And in the tiniest way, it makes me feel more present.

I flip through these pages and I see… me. Not the curated online version. Not the cleaned-up notion of functionality I try to project. I see the smudges, the impulse doodles, the places where I wrote too fast and didn’t leave space for that last letter. I see a record of someone trying.

This system isn’t perfect.

It’s not even sustainable half the time.

I will abandon it for weeks.

I will fall behind and think “Well, I’ve ruined it now.”

I will spend more time designing inserts than actually using them.

But when I come back, when I pick up the pen and lay down one more cursed little sticker, it still feels like mine.

And in a world that keeps demanding my productivity, my perfection, my peace?

That feels like power.

Even if it’s just printed at 300dpi with rounded corners and a cryptid on the front.