March 2020 – Kat Pollock

As a planner lover, one of my favorite things has been the tactile nature of journaling. Layering decorative paper and stickers onto a page to create a beautiful spread is immensely satisfy. So, when I heard of Goodnotes, a digital planner app, I was skeptical that I would get much out of using it.

Now, the past few months have been several orders of magnitude more busy than my usual life. I haven’t had time to invest as much energy in making my physical planner look nice, and it was starting to get pretty discouraging.

Enter Goodnotes 5.

Within a few minutes of playing around with the app on my iPad, I was smitten. It’s a different experience than using my physical planner, but I found it quite freeing to be able to undo and erase any mistakes, playing around with different ideas without the worry of wasting paper.

This added freedom means that it takes less mental energy to make a nice looking page spread in Goodnotes than it does to make one in my physical planner.

If you’re a planner enthusiast like me, and you feel like trying a new medium, I have only good things to say about Goodnotes 5. (As far as I know, it’s only available on iOS)

Happy planning!

-Kat

I’m going to start this post with a little backstory on the week that I read Maureen Johnson’s mystery trilogy conclusion, The Hand on the Wall.

This February, my house flooded. The entire bottom floor is gutted, and frankly, so am I. In between fitful nights of sleep as fans downstairs struggled to air dry the walls, I wanted to get lost in a good book.

Enter “The Hand on the Wall.”

Johnson’s magnetic writing style pulled me out of my crisis filled reality and straight into the high stakes world of Ellingham Academy and all the mysteries it holds.

Moreover, I found myself empathizing deeply with Stevie, the novel’s protagonist. Stevie has an anxiety disorder, a condition which might seem at odds with her passion for true crime and investigation.

Seeing Stevie shine as an almost Veronica Mars-esque heroine was such an empowering experience, I wish I could show this book to my teenaged self, who thought anxiety disqualified her from being the hero of any story.

Even now, as I’m slogging through one of the most stressful crises of my adult life, I needed this book. I needed to see Stevie prevail against the odds. It’s what gave me strength to push on during an absolutely unparalleled week of stress, and beyond that, it’s just a darn good book.

If you like mysteries or you just need to feel a little bit more powerful than you did yesterday, I highly recommend this book!

Happy reading!

-Kat

Month: March 2020

Digital Journaling

Review of The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson