Notes from The Grimoire: August 2025
We made it! I know this one is late, but I had some technical issues rip the rug out from under me at the end of August. I considered skipping it, but I have some really important things to share from the past month, so I decided it was better late than never.
The Scrolls: A Review
My PACT for August was
I will review my budget three times a week for the month of August.
Here's how it went:
Purposeful
Did I stay connected to my why?
I did. But it didn't go as planned, as you'll see below.
Actionable
What specific steps did I take?
I scheduled a budget check-in 3 times a week in my planner.
Continuous
How consistent was I?
Honestly? Not very - BUT not unsuccessful in the end! Read on to find out why.
Where did I struggle?
Many times there really just wasn't very much to do in there. I realized pretty quickly that the three-times-a-week cadence was too frequent— and that this was likely the problem with twice weekly as well.
Trackable
Did I do it?
If we define this experiment in literal terms, the short answer is: No.
On the surface this sounds like a failure, but two important things happened this month that actually make it feel like a success:
- At about the halfway point, I approached my husband with the idea of checking in with each other on budget related things once weekly.
I had a hunch that having a regular moment to check-in (a form of body-doubling or an accountabilty partnership) could help me feel less defensive when The Budget™️ came up. The simple act of turning a solo task into a shared one often helps anchor focus and lower the executive function barrier to getting started, and I hoped it might also help us feel more in-sync.
An unexpected side-effect of this was that, knowing we were going to have a check-in together made me feel more interested in checking it myself.
- In the second official month of focusing on addressing this anxiety, there has finally been a notable decrease! Progress!
I think it's the combined benefits of getting on the same page with my partner, and the exposure therapy of it all. The act of repeatedly opening the budget, seeing nothing awful had happened, then closing it, is slowly rewiring that anxiety response. I'm sharing this as an example of how small rituals can soothe an anxious nervous system that's learned to associate a benign task with danger.
I've even started adding transactions to it on the fly, rather than saving them for my dedicated time to update.
How did I track it?
Very informally. At first I was going to do what I had done previously by creating a trackable habit or a Loyalty Card, but when I realized what the issue was I just started writing "Budget Check-In" on our chosen day in my planner.
Seeing that it was coming up whenever I visited my weekly view helped circumvent the "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon that I tend to have with digital tracking.
I want to make it clear that I wasn't perfectly on point with everything, and I probably never will be. But, despite so many other things feeling completely out of control in August, the important thing about this one was that I finally started to feel more in control than I have in a long time.
That's huge, because none of the struggles I mentioned in July have changed, this is an internal shift. An incredibly important one.
In the Garden
Watering (What's Working)
We Have a Discord Server Now!
I spent some time trying to figure out how to streamline the channels I'd have to check so that I can focus on writing and being present for my Attentive Archive fam, and (for me) Discord has just the right blend of social features to become a main point of connection.
All of my Attentive Archive posts are linked there if you want to discuss any of them further, and we have dedicated channels for fun and focus - with optional discussions every day of the week and regular (plus spontaneous) co-working sessions for when you could use a body double.
✨ Tap here to join 🔮 —we'd love to have you!
Community: The PKM Collective born after my entrance into the Ness Labs community is feeding my soul in ways I didn't realize I still needed.
What started as weekly Zoom sessions has grown into a nearly constant stream of sharing, teaching, and learning together in exactly the ways you'd expect a healthy community to grow.
The deepening of these connections has been a boon for my mental health that's difficult to describe. I'm grateful every day for this little band of nerds, and excited for all the things we're planning to do together in the (near!) future.
(Stay tuned if you're interested to hear more when I'm able to share!)
Weeding (What's Not Working)
I'll be honest, things went off the rails for a minute in August.
Early in the month, I hit the depression I'd been desperately swerving to avoid all Summer like a brick wall. I flew through the last couple stages of burnout, and crashed into a sea of anxiety.
Even if you miss every other sign, you know you're in trouble when your established mental health providers are confirming your emergency contacts in spite of your reassurances... Right? In the stillness after that crash, I knew something had to change —and that it wasn't just my mood.
Desperate to ward off the outcomes that haunted my dreams, I threw out my expectations and started over. I took the time to re-prioritize with intention, focusing on my mental health and my most important relationships.
Along the way I realized that the reasons I was feeling so out of control weren't only related to burnout. In general, I was still using the same productivity system and operating by the same rules I had established while in college during the past couple of years.
The minimal space and quick reviews in my planner (my beloved Hobonichi Techo Weeks) had served very well for that purpose. But, since graduating in May, I have been doing a lot more creative work —work that my existing systems were not designed to support. Without realizing it, I was seeking the cognitive space to process and brainstorm, but my tools were boxing me in.
While most information still made it to my capture method of choice, a pocket notebook, I had begun to collect index cards, scraps of paper, sticky notes, receipts, productivity apps and task managers I know wouldn't work for me, plus more random bits and bobs in an effort to keep things from getting lost.
In spite of all this effort, things were getting lost.
Planting (What's Changing)
Then, I saw this YouTube video and it clicked. I needed more space in my planner, not more capture methods. That's why so many things were ending up elsewhere!
Up until about 2022 or so I had lived out of a standard (A5) sized notebook. It housed a Bullet Journal-esque productivity system, which worked quite well for keeping track of my work schedule, and still had plenty of room to sketch designs for the Etsy shop I ran for a while.
That size ended up being more space than I needed to track deadlines and outline projects for classes when my focus shifted. So I moved into the much smaller and more-structured Weeks, thinking I'd never look back.
Silly me.
Saving strategies that worked and returning to them later is kinda my whole thing! Why did I think this would be an exception?
Truthfully, I don't know. But after some cursory research I ordered a heavily discounted 2025 Hobonichi Cousin - the bigger... well... Cousin of the Weeks, to experiment with before committing.
Let me tell you, being back in an A5 size has felt like coming home in the best way.
I took a couple of hours over the weekend to gather and process all of the meeting notes, reminders, and task lists I had floating around on my desk, in my pockets, in a text chat with myself, and tucked into my Field Notes.
Then I consolidated my digital calendars from three to one, moved any events or chores I needed to be reminded of there, and consolidated everything else into an old-fashioned brain dump in the Hobonichi Cousin (if you clicked, just know mine is not that pretty, it just had too much private stuff on it to share a photo) —it filled an entire page!
But I feel really good knowing everything that previously felt unmoored is in one place again.
The Workbench
In the Works
During the Great Migration above, I also took a little time to scaffold a planning and productivity system that will be more supportive going into 2026 —and I'll be sharing all the details on that process in a separate Planner Season✨ post soon!
Processing Sessions
Part of renewing my processes will be building in time for processing information at regular intervals. If you'd be interested in joining me for these sessions I'll be holding them in the Discord, so that's the best place to get in touch.
If you'd rather not join Discord right now, you can follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my email list, or send an email via this contact form to stay up to date.
Taking Inventory
It's also the time of year where I do what I think of as "auditing" my pantry, refrigerator, and medicine cabinet (among other sundries). This typically consists of checking expiration dates, cleaning, and reorganizing.
I'm also batting around the possibility of sharing this process in some kind of live or asynchronous Q&A format. I used to share my weekly meal-prep process in Instagram stories when I was more on top of that sort of thing, and it was really fun!
If you'd be interested in joining for those sessions: again, the best way would be to join the Discord. But you can also subscribe to my email list, follow on Instagram, or shoot me an email so I can make sure to let you know when and how I decide to make it happen!
Current Hyperfocus
System-Tidying & Iteration
September is about the time I naturally pause to evaluate how my year has gone, then use that data to plan for the next one. It's a bit of an odd pattern, with a quarter of the calendar year left to go, but I attribute this tendency to the fact that my personal new year rolls over this month. 🎂
I'll be reviewing my notes, journals, and the systems I've used this year; then deciding what I want to stop, continue, or change (and how). It's a bit of a process, but I enjoy it! Plus, the truth is that it has served me well to set aside the time to do this with intention, rather than have it catch up with me later.
PACT for September
In light of all that's on my workbench, I've decided not to set a PACT for September. Instead, I'll be shifting my focus to the workbench itself: mindfully auditing my systems and making intentional changes. Rather than feeling like a pause on progress, I see this decision as a commitment to fortifying the foundation on which that progress is built —so it can stand strong through the seasons to come.