Bullet journaling 

You may have heard about it or you never heard about it and it’s your first time hearing about it. (Yeah that was a lot to say all at once aha) 

My life can be a mess and so can my mind and when things are a mess they need some sort of organization. Years ago I started using planners and not the plain boring ones. A planner from happy planner. It has all these cute designs and different sheets you can fill in to keep track of stuff and something that I will spend hours trying to find the best one. Now these planners have helped me remember what needed to be done especially when I post blog posts and social media stuff or when I needed a place to keep track of everything or when my dog gets her period because for some reason we can never keep track of when she gets it. 

But over the years with happy planners and well planners, in general, is that it never had everything I needed and it seemed each year I lost a little section or one planner had the section I wanted had the outline but it didn’t have something else or it was a hundred dollars and I simply am to broke to even afford that. 

So as the new year started and my tik tok was filled with people talking about their planners and what they did. In the mix some people talked about bullet journaling and when the word journaling happens to pop up I fully ignore it as I have tried so many different times to get into journaling and after a week I would just give up. However, bullet journaling was now filling up my tik tok with people using different designs and showing all the ways they use their bullet journals and then I got interested. 

A guy who made the bullet journal and well the point of it has a website and its just this plan book with daily tasks and maybe some design but barely anything but if you dig deeper then you’ll see more designs and sooner or later you’ll be on google on a deep dive about bullet journals. But it sparked my interest as my planner had its perks but not enough that I wanted. So I took a dive and got supplies and by supplies I bought a cheap journal on Amazon and then lurked around my house finding pencils pens markers and a ruler and the odd stencil that I had from years ago. 

So here’s my mess about bullet journaling 

Bullet journaling? What’s the point? 

You can design whatever you want in it. You can put whatever pages you wanna put into it. It’s different from planners and you can make it look however you want there is no limit and it’s kind fun. 

One of the perks for myself was that I had a place where I could just do some stupid doodles where I could just draw some flowers and some really bad four-leaf clovers seriously for the life of me I could not draw a four leaf clover and just ended up drawing some hearts and then a stem.. Even if you’re bad a drawing just a nice place to do things and when it’s time to make another design I had some quiet to myself while playing music and designing my life away. 

I can’t start in Mid-July. I can’t start mid-year..?

Yeah, you can hell you can start in December. That was the fun part about bullet journaling is that I could literally start anywhere because I was the one designing it and also a lot I heard from the creator himself or other bullet journal people was that if you stop one day and forget about it and then come back one day it doesn’t matter you can start whenever or stop whenever. 

I am horrible when it comes to committing to a project. The amount of hobbies that have picked up these past few years and forgot about them after a good week is concerning. With bullet journaling, there was no guilt if I missed a day or decided to stop. 

Horrible drawer? 

I am horrible but my entire rule for this journal was “Fuck It” no one else will see it and I already know I’m a bad drawer so my expectations are low like I mean down in hell low. The only thing that has helped me was buying some stencils from Amazon that have some cute drawings on it. 

So just for planning? 

It wasn’t the actually planning part that got me into journaling since I already had a planner to do that but it was all the fun pages I got to add it. I’ll list them why not. 

1. Pixel a day 

This page I love. You make this chart with like a graph with days and months and it’s basically you choose a few colours and they mean something so Red being angry, Yellow being a great day/ feeling great. Gray being a sad day/ feeling sad, Pink for feeling ok and each day you fill it out either the day after or before bed and at the end of the year you realize how depressed you been. 

2. Books, Games, Shows, Movies 

Something new is always coming out and god forbid if I actually remember all that things. So for each, I made a page. For movies, I made movie tickets, for shows I made tvs, For books I had a bookshelf with books (At the end of reading each other book a bonus to colour it in) for games I tried doing game boys but failed so ended up back on TVs.

I use it for games and books the most since I always learn of a new on tik tok and its way better than screenshotting it and completely forgetting about it till one day you’re on a deep dive on your phone trying to search for said thing and its never to be found. 

3. Birthdays and Gifts.

I have to many people in my life, and with too many people in my life I have to many birthdays so I made a page with party balloons and each ballon is a month and I fill out each ballon for someone’s birthday. 

The gifts page well its hard to find gifts for people and its one of those things where you think of something and then when you go to buy it you completely forget hence the gift section comes into handy.

4. Quotes 

Now this one some may find strange or odd but I read a lot in my life and I love reading quotes from authors or people who are dead or a quote that makes me think about life for the next three hours and I decided why not make a page about it. 

Now I will admit there isn’t a whole lot on this list but there were my favorites and the ones I truly wanted. There are tons of different ones like keeping track of a money goal you have or a famous one “The Last Time I” and then you put yearly ones but I actually use it for monthly like cleaning my geckos tank a few times a month or remembering the last time I posted a blog post. 

Like I said I already have a planner so I didnt really need a daily log or even a weekly log so when I decided to do bullet journals I decided to do a monthly planner. In the monthly planner. 

1. A habit tracker 

One tracker for daily writing, One for reading and the next for waking up early. I had four at one point and the last was French but I gave up on that one

This month

I have three sections, 

1. To do 
2. To Achieve 
3. Reminders 

3. The last time I did 

Well I already explained that one in the last paragraph 

I have been doing this since February and it’s well it’s mid July and I am still going strong. To be honest I really thought that I would have given up by now. But in the end, I generally love bullet journaling and each month I get to make a new design. 

Is bullet journaling worth it? 

Yeah or at least to give it a try. The hard part especially if you wanna make it look pretty is seeing all these photos on Tik Tok and Pinterest and you realize how your journal will never really be that good but it’s fun to do and I got the chance to add whatever I wanted to whatever page. I get to do some stupid drawings once a month and colour. I get to just sit down and be in the moment fully distracted with my loud mind. Like I said the best part is you can start in July and then forget about it and pick it back up in December and just turn the page and make the layout. There are no rules and there are no things you should follow. Adulthood doesn’t have to be boring we are allowed to colour god damn it.