Meet My Binder!

Hello, my name is Jacki and I would like you to meet my very grown up work binder. 

See? The other night I had an epiphany of a dream in which I woke up 100% convinced that I could use an old school Trapper Keeper to organize my work life. 

It's a lot more complex now that I'm a freelancer. I have different clients and different projects and different goals. And that doesn't even take into consideration that one million projects my brain thinks I have time to do. 

So then I started shopping for a Trapper Keeper, but none of them were hitting right, so I stopped looking for a while. 

Then I decided I didn't need the throwback style of an actual Trapper Keeper and started looking at binders. 

At first, I tried to talk myself into something practical and professional in a classy color like navy blue or plain black. 

But I reminded myself, that's not what I have to be anymore. That's not who I am and I have no reason to pretend that it is. 

So then I put the following four words in to the search bar:

"pink glitter 3-ring binder"

I immediately was greeted with many options, but a lot of them were too flowery or teen-y or just not me-y at all. 

Then I found one that had, like, a pink abstract sound wave on it. 

It wasn't Jacki-y enough for me, but it was a good start. 

I started thinking about things I love that also feel like business Jacki. 

So I could buy stickers for the front of it, of course. 

I landed on Bob's Burgers... specifically Tina Belcher. The main reason I landed on this is because one of my clients, The Lunas. 

They have believed in me since before I even got started and I am so lucky to work with them. A few years ago, for a Christmas gift, the Lunas got me an "Espresso Trip Tina (+Unicorn)" Funko Pop. 

Then when I went freelance, they gifted me with an original piece of Tina Belcher art, proclaiming her smart, strong, & sensual. I treasure this art and can't wait to hang it up in my grown up lady home office. 

So Tina felt right work wise. 

Then I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would organize it in a way that would work best for my brain. Not however way I learned in school and didn't use and definitely not any of the ways the Internet instructed me to do it. 

Then, I added cover color-coded tab-y things that I can use to flag important pages. 

What a freeing feeling organizing this binder was! And you know what? Working in it is even better. I feel organized in a way that I can actually work effectively. Instead of being all stressed out that I wasn't organized to anyone's standards but my own. 

I mean before I was working from a random willy nilly spiral notebook with no organization whatsoever, although sometimes I did dog ear a page or two for easy access. 

So, hello, dear reader, I'd like you to meet my binder:

What should we name it?