A calendar is a tool that is essential for everybody. This is why I was taught how to use one in first grade.

Once I mastered the use of a standard month-to-month calendar, I fell in love with the concept. I loved knowing which day of week, month, and day it was. It seemed as if every day had its own name and personality. The days were like little people to me.

As I grew up, I learned to use calendars to plan ahead. The little squares (or big squares) could tell me when that important paper was due and how much time I had to work on it. I could break down the entire task into pieces and assign each piece to a square (i.e., day). Since I am a visual learner, using a calendar to do this made things much easier.

Now that I am an editor, I prefer using a weekly planner. You probably already know this, but a weekly planner is a calendar that shows each week on two pages. I like such planners because each day’s space gives me plenty of room to write—much more than a little square on a wall calendar. The more appointments and tasks I can write in a single day, the better.

I take (or try to remember to take) my planner to all my doctor’s appointments so that I can make a note of when the next one will be. I remember once being at the reception desk of one doctor’s office and jokingly referring to my planner as my “smartphone” (as in “Let me get out my smartphone.”) This was 2015, and I did not yet have an actual smartphone; I only had a basic flip phone. Would you believe that even though I own a smartphone and could use its calendar to enter appointments, I still use my paper planner? Old habits die hard. Besides, using the tiny alphanumeric “buttons” on a smartphone screen is difficult for a cerebral palsy patient—but I will keep my rants about systemic ableism to myself for now.

You can bet that my planner will be with me every moment of EFACON 2023, which begins this Thursday afternoon and runs until Saturday evening. Speaking of which, since I will be journeying home next Sunday, I will not be blogging next weekend. I hope that all of you, dear readers, enjoy the late summer, and I will be back here on August 27^th.