Working at an online magazine has afforded me the opportunity to explore all kinds of new and varied aspects of technology. Before working here, I never gave a second thought to starting a Twitter account, for example. I'd been using my old school cell phone, sans Internet capabilities, without a care in the world, and couldn't care less if I had a camera.

It's not that I didn't know how to use them; I just didn't care to be bothered. Now, all of these things are as natural to me as checking e-mail. I didn't even give them a second thought until recently, when 2011 rolled in and my day planner ran out of pages.

I had mentioned to a friend (who also shares my necessity for micromanagement) that I needed to pick up another one, and she suggested I just use the calendar on my phone. I figured, rather than spend money, I may as well take advantage of something that I could use at the low, low price of free.

I gave the phone calendar a go for about an hour, which was about how long it took for me to realize it's garbage. Does it keep track of my appointments and to-do lists? Sure, but it annoys me to death tapping my way through pages and dates to get there. All I want is to open to a physical page and see my whole week laid out for me, in handwriting only I can read because it's just that illegible.

And, try as I might, I can't get used to not writing down what I need to get done. There's something more committal to writing something down that simply clicking through some errant keystrokes can't cement in my head. So, I abandoned the high-tech spirit and went out and bought a book, with pages, in which to store my life. As soon as I had it in my hands, I felt safe, like I was wrapped in an itemized security blanket.

$4.19 is a small price to pay for sanity.