Week 29/2025: Another election and another notebook

Week of 14 July 2025

This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.

Another election

This week moved along with nothing terribly exciting happening. Unless you want to count the election that nobody wanted.

At least everyone in Tasmania got another opportunity to support the local schools (and the local butchers) with a democracy sausage.

Or two, if you didn’t have breakfast that morning.

An uneventful week

Apart from the election, it was a fairly uneventful week

Unless you count getting an exciting package on Monday, which contained my new Traveler’s Notebook, which I have lusted after for quite some time!

#cultofmidori

I joined the #cultofmidori in 2014 when I got my first Traveler’s Notebook, which back then was known as a Midori Traveler’s Notebook made by the Japan-based Midori company. I bought it to accompany me on my trip to the UK and it seems I didn’t write much about it.

Here it is with its travel journal insert before I went on the trip.

If you aren’t familiar with with this notebook, or notebook system, it’s basically a leather cover strung with elastic bands, which you can set up and customise any way you like. There’s a range of notebook inserts you can include in the book, including blank books, diaries and sketch books. There are two sizes, the original regular and the passport, introduced in 2009. The regular is 11 x 21 cm, so a similar height to A5 but narrower, and the passport notebooks are 89mm x 124 mm, slightly smaller than A6.

The range has expended since the original MTN was launched in 2006 to include accessories like zip pockets, card holders and folders.

And it can get out of hand. There are entire internet groups for people to share their setups, which might include a massive stack of notebooks and accessories stuck into the cover, as well as a multitude of different imitations of the system in all shapes and sizes that people create and sell. (Just take a look at Etsy and you’ll get the idea.)

Traveler’s Company

Somewhere along the way (2015), the notebook was rebranded from a Midori Traveler’s Notebook to a Traveler’s Notebook, with the Traveler’s Company becoming a separate entity from Midori.  Or something. They also changed the size of the leather cover so you can fit more inserts in without the notebooks overhanging the cover. (With the old size, if you had move than one or two notebooks, they tended to not quite fit in the cover. The pain of the overhang was real.)

In my quest to carry a notebook with me everywhere I go, and also have access to a diary without having to look at my phone, as well as a place to keep my cards, I’d been tossing around the idea of getting a passport sized version as my go-to carryall. I have a brown and an olive regular size, but I was a bit meh about blue as a colour for these books. But I saw one in a shop on my recent trip to Melbourne and I loved it. Picking up and flipping it round in my hands, it just felt like it would work really well for what I want.

So, while I might not have bought anything in the stationery store when I was in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, I might as well have . . .

Habit tracker

Existing habits

• Go outside first thing (7 days): 7/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 7/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
• Walk (7 days): 7/7
• Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
• 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 0/6
• Evening routine (6 days): 4/6

New habits

• Fill water bottle in the morning (5 days): 5/5
• Carry a notebook with me when I walk (7 days): 5/7
• Mid-day journalling (7 days): 2/7
• Thinking time (4 days): 1/4
• Read aloud (7 days): 7/7

Summary of the week

Some positive things

A lovely dinner with a friend we hadn’t seen for ages.

What did I learn this week?

A curlicue is a fancy twist or curl, like a flourish made with a pen.

What did I notice this week?

I was at the coffee shop and a small child was there with a grandparent and on the table with them was a mermaid that looked the same (other than the hair) as the one Kramstable got from Melbourne Aquarium in 2015.

Three chickens on the roof of the chicken house. I knew they were going up there because I’d seen poo on the roof but never actually seen them there.

What am I reading this week?

• Year of Wonder by Karen Brooks
• Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

What am I watching this week?

• Masterchef Australia
• Resident Alien
• Doctor Who: The Visitation
• Bay of Fires

What am I listening to this week?

• Spacemakers Season 1 podcast