(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)
I have mentioned before that I don’t do a lot of journaling but that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff outside of my Bullet Journal that I don’t want to track or write about. Since my foot surgery last year, I’ve been working on prioritizing health and fitness, with the hopes of possibly doing a race this year. I didn’t want it to just be about exercise, since there’s more to being healthy than just exercise. To be honest though, I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to write but I thought an undated notebook might be the right place to start.
Cue the Free Diary from TRAVELER’S COMPANY (sorry, I’m gonna only use initial caps from now on cuz I hate yelling, lol). The Traveler’s Company Free Diary (which is not free of cost, but free of dates) comes in two sizes - the regular Traveler’s Notebook (TN) size and the passport size. Both have 32 sheets, or 64 pages - enough for 28 weeks (a little more than half the year), especially helpful if there are weeks that you don’t plan to use it. This review is going to focus on the regular size Free Diary.
The regular size Free Diary comes in two different formats - horizontal (like the Hobonichi Weeks) and vertical. The vertical format is useful if you need time tracking/planning, but since I don’t need that, the horizontal format suits my needs better.
The Traveler’s Company Free Diary 019 refill.
The back side with graphics to illustrate how the refill can be used.
As with many of the TN inserts, the paper is MD Paper. The paper in this insert is a slight cream color, which is fine with me. I do prefer white paper but it isn’t so yellow that I’m bothered by it.
The “title” page of your TN insert - ready for you to customize with name or decorate or both. I haven’t figured out what to put there yet (besides my name) so mine is still empty.
After the title page, there are two blank pages. While it looks like there are grids/columns on the right side, that’s just ghosting from the next two pages. There is a subtle Traveler’s Company logo on the bottom right of the page.
The next 4 pages (2 sheets) have a total of 12 columns for whatever months you want to fill in. This can be useful to see upcoming important dates. If I was training for a big race, I might put some interim races or milestone workouts in this space.
This is what an empty 2-page week looks like. On the left, there are horizontal spaces for your daily entries and on the right, a grid for you to write whatever you like. The lines separating the days extend to the grid side and are slightly darker than the rest of the gridlines.
The top left of each weekly page has a digital-style template for you to fill in the month and year. As you can see, it is a Monday-start and you can write the date above it. I personally would’ve liked the option to have the Mon/Tue/etc blank, in case I only needed to use a few days of the week and save some pages, but that’s just a nitpick on my part.
I have filled in 06 and 2026 in the upper left and the dates for this week. Yes, I’m already behind for this week, lol.
I decided to put translucent stickers on the dates, which gives them a fun little pop of color.
I’ve also used washi tape as a background and applied date stickers on top (stickers were from Shady Pines but they’re no longer available). The covered portions are my weight - sorry, I’m not interested in advertising my weight to the world, lol.
So, what have I been tracking in this insert? My Garmin has a metric called “Body Battery” that measures a bunch of stuff like heart rate, stress, sleep quality, etc. and gives you a score that you start the day with and monitors it throughout the day, which helps you figure out if you need to take a break, if you’re ready for activity, etc. I always jot down the score when I wake up cuz it only goes down from there, unless I take a nap.
I also track weight, while also knowing that it fluctuates daily but for me (and may or may not apply to you), seeing the daily fluctuations tells me if I’m on track. It’s rarely a surprise to see the number go up when I return from travel but it’s nice to see it go down when I’ve been working out a lot or eating better. Which brings me to…
Food - I don’t track everything I eat. I’ve tried it, it does not work for me, and it makes me miserable. But I do track if I had alcohol and whether I had a protein shake for lunch or what I ate for dinner, or if I had a late night snack. Those things usually “show up” on the scale the next day.
Medications/Dr appts - If I have any change in medications, prescriptions, supplements or any doctor/dentist/wellness appointments, I’d jot a note in here - I haven’t jotted down much else besides my uneventful dentist and optometrist appts.
Workouts/movement - Thankfully, I’ve been back to running and am currently running 3-4 times a week and walking on the other days to reach my daily step goal of 7,500 steps (about a 5k or 3.1 miles, give or take). I don’t write a lot of details about every workout but just some quick stats cuz there’s not a lot of room there. And since we all know I can’t stop talking…
The right side of the page is great for me to go into details about the week. Maybe I want to talk about a particularly tough workout, or when I felt really good, or that time when I tripped on a hidden tree root and slammed my body and cheek into the ground (that was a not-good workout). I might also talk about whether my sleep has been suffering (like when I try to breathe at my in-laws at 9000’ (or 2740m)) or any eating challenges/successes. It’s a perfectly sized space since there’s rarely more than 1-2 things I might want to talk about.
You may have also noticed that I’ve slapped a bunch of affirmational/encouraging stickers. We all need encouragement and it’s good for me to see them, even if I’ve had a crappy week/workout. Not to mention, it ups my stickers-used count and using up stickers makes me happy too.
Of course, I couldn’t leave the refill cover unstickered, so I slapped more stickers on the cover too!
I love the messages on these stickers and it reminds me to be kind to myself and that I’m stronger than I sometimes think … and so are you ♥️
Jaclyn Myers of Kaleidocraft will be happy to know that these numbers are going up next month (these tallies were from the end of May.)
I started this refill on February 1st because I didn’t think of doing this until mid-January, lol. But that’s what makes an undated refill perfect for this! You can start any time, skip weeks if needed, and pick up again without wasting pages. I’ve actually been able to mostly keep up with this journal. It helps that I have the health and workout data on Garmin and I jot down dinner notes in my BuJo so I can easily go back to fill stuff in. I’m looking forward to filling out the next 2 months of tracking and then, I get to start a whole new insert.
(Disclaimer: All products are my own. Insert was purchased at Flax Pen to Paper, the sticker/washi trackers are from Kaleidocraft, and stickers are from Happy Planner and from a friend who sent me some).
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