Back in a Ciak (again...)

A5 day per page Ciak diary

Most years, I've had an A5 Ciak which I've used as a daily diary/journal. It's not used for planning, but used to record the day and also my thoughts. One year I made the terrible, terrible mistake of buying a Moleskine. I still shudder when I think about 2013.

2014 saw me back in a Ciak, as did 2015. This year, I won a Quo Vadis Forum page per day diary. I've been struggling womanfully through the year with it (see this post and this post for how well/badly it's been going). I won't buy another though. It's been okay to record highlights of the day and a quick summary, but what I really want is somewhere to not only do that, but reflect on the day too. I used to do that in the Ciaks and will go back to it next year.

As ever, I got my Ciak from The Journal Shop (no affiliation, just a happy customer). I was amazed to see that they were only £4.99 when I got mine. And... I had a 20% off code so in fact, I got it for £4 which is just amazing! They are normally about £15 and seemed to be back up to about £13 when I next looked.

Why do I love the Ciaks so much? The paper quality isn't fabulous and back in 2012, it was the paper quality that pushed me to a Moleskine (which was then even worse than the Ciak). I'll try it out, but I'm not convinced it will cope with fountain pen, but then I'm not sure there are many A5, day per page that do cope with fountain pen. Ciak seems to have stopped claiming that it's okay for fountain pen.

One thing that I demand from a diary/journal is that Saturday and Sunday each have their own page and don't get forced to share a page!

Separate days for Saturday and Sunday

I also love the horizontal elastic closure which is snug enough to hold a pen against the edge of the pages.

All in all, I'm pretty happy to be back in a Ciak for 2017.