Shut Up And Take My Money, Erin Condren.

I have lost my mind and fallen into the life of a Planner Person. It can't be a good thing to buy into the consumerism of my own need to control everything. 

You know that feeling you get when you discover something new and there's so much to learn and you're really into it? That's how I am about planners right now. I DID NOT KNOW THAT PLANNERS AND AGENDAS HAD SUCH A FOLLOWING. If there's anything I am forever grateful to the internet for, it's for showing me that for every weird thing I'm into, there's a whole bunch of people who are also into it, and they don't fuck around.

When I was in high school, we got agendas every year and I'd have the best fucking time putting in all my classes and assignments. I didn't care so much about attending class or doing the assignments, but by god, I knew when that fucking project was due and I knew just when to start panicking about not having done it. The kids in my high school decorated their planners and  used them as scrapbooks - I thought this was particular to my school, but apparently this is a global phenomenon. Using Your Planner As A Chronicle Of Your Life.

 Colour-coding: the Foreplay of the Planner Community

Mine contained concert tickets, programs, song lyrics, pictures cut out of magazines (in grade 10, it was all about Drew Barrymore from YM magazine. By Grade 12, it was any photos of Trent Reznor I could get my hands on from NME), cartoons and some exceptionally bad poetry. I kept using a planner after high school, because I always needed a way to keep track of my shifts at work and my spending, but I didn't realize that decorating or colour-coding my agenda wasn't specific to me until I watched a YouTube video where a girl talked for twenty minutes about how she organizes her planner. About then is when I figured out that other people are also crazy about planners and agendas, and I'm clearly not the only one who decorates hers.

Enter the Rolls-Royce of agendas: The Erin Condren Life Planner.

 Stephen downloaded a Hallelujah chorus app onto his phone so he could play it when I opened up the box. I forgot to mention that this was his anniversary gift to me this year. My gift to him was a special Lego set. This is what happens when two nerds find each other.

Erin Condren is this woman who made agendas into her goddamn career. White people, man. They're fucking amazing. If you go to her website, you can see why these things are such a big fucking deal, but if you're a lazy asshole, here are the basics:

1. You can customize the cover and pretty much everything else about the planner.
2. It was obviously designed by someone who has spent an unholy amount of time thinking about this shit.
3. If you get a friend all worked up about these things, they can use your referral code for $10 off their first purchase, and then you get a $10 credit when they buy stuff. YAS.

So I received my new planner last week, and I've been unable to talk about or think about anything else since. Below is the video of my unboxing and first impressions. For those of you on the edges of your seats, I'll have an actual review of the planner and how I'm using mine because SERIOUSLY PEOPLE MAKE VIDEOS ABOUT THESE THINGS.