Taking my Bullet Journal into the New Year
Immediately glossing over the fact I haven’t written a blog post since October - more to come on that (hopefully) this week.
Bullet journal.
The buzz word(s) of 2016/2017. A time where every blogger and their dog had one, where leuchtturm was commonly spoken of and a time where I’d schedule at least 2 bujo inspired posts per month. The blissful years where I’d hit 100k pageviews and had over a million views on Pinterest. A better time.
Now, for as many people I see waxing lyrical about how they’re still devotees of the bullet journal trend (is it still a trend now or just a fact of life?), I see as many moving to Bando or Papier or talking about how they stopped using it long ago.
As we turn the corner of the page on the twenty ten’s, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the non bujoers and the die hard fans. I built my blog on bullet journaling, I hooked most of my followers from bullet journal content and luckily got them to stay. I created a following for my blog from bullet journaling which ended up resulting in a Blogosphere award shortlisting in 2017. I got brand collabs from bullet journaling. I became a resource, I created resources and people cited me as their bujo inspo and so I feel like I can’t abandon it now when it’s been so kind to me.
But equally, as I hit the busiest year of my life, I found my bullet journal and the methods I used it just weren’t working for me anymore. I sensed this shift in the tail end of 2018 when I’d been in full time employment for a few months and found myself slipping off the bandwagon but none the less, I asked for a white Leuchtturm 1917 in my trusty squared format for Christmas and in 2019 I tried to revamp it and make it work.
Gone were the big spreads of inspiration I never sought or lists I never looked at. Habit tracking was knocked on the head in about February. Monthly calendars were a thing of the past and instead I laid all my weeklies out in one half of the journal, and left the other half blank for whatever I needed it for. And in some aspects it worked, but fundamentally it didn’t and I have finished 2019 with a half empty journal and weekly spreads with nothing on them other than the date.
My life has changed drastically since the hedonistic days of 2016 when I thought I knew what stressed was. I intend to write a big old blog post up on this topic but keeping it purely to bullet journals, the way I use them has changed because my circumstances have changed and for a while, I thought the same old set up would be absolutely fine.
When I started journalling, I was self employed and a full-time freelance illustrator, taking care of my niece 3 times a week, living with Jos’ parents and working from my Mum’s house every day. I had time to journal, I had time to fill in spreads - hell, I even had time to blog. My work life and my personal life were one and the same, there was no differentiation in my mind, my time or my tasks and I would have ‘do client invoice’ next to ‘go to Morrisons’ on my to do list. My life revolved around those bullet journals and I would have been lost without them, incapable of prioritising or remembering anything, even completely two a year because I used them so much.
Nowadays, I work 37.5 hours a week over 5 days for someone else. My freelance career is slotted into a snatched few hours as and when work comes in, I visit my now two nieces when I can, I have my own house and have to run it and blogging has become a distant memory in favour of wedding planning. These days, with my life busier than ever, I find myself reaching for my phone a lot more. Our shared Google calendar with Jos’ family has become my life. The notes section on my phone full of ramblings and the reminders app full of different to do lists. I reach for scrap paper at home much more to write down my brain full of tasks and remembering birthdays has become a test of my own knowledge not a flip to a beautiful spread in my journal.
But with all that said and done, I am not ready to give up on the bullet journal once and for all. I have got a (slightly more puke than lime) green new journal for 2020 and as much as I hate to waste the paper in the half full 2019 one, I love nothing more than a fresh start. I have never felt more overwhelmed than this year and yes it’s partly down to wedding planning, personal stress and work but I’d also definitely attribute a lot of it to a full mind. To not writing things down, to trying to remember it all and not having the ability to brain dump and that is something I am determined to curb in 2020 as I rush into 6 weeks before the wedding.
For me, bullet journalling died a death as I knew it in 2019 and I keep saying things like “oh I haven’t used it at all” or “I don’t do that anymore” but it’s completely untrue. In my day job, bullet journaling is the only thing that keeps me sane and I would be lost without it. I have the same old Leuchtturm 1917 squared paper notebook (in smart corporate colours you understand) and I use it daily, without fail. There is no habit tracking involved and no beautiful spreads or fancy illustrations but instead, a colour coded system of tasks, a weekly summary of what needs to be done and then daily to dos that can sometimes span page after page after page. It’s not beautiful but any means but it’s functional and it works and I would not be able to organise my job without it.
Realising this was the turning point for me when considering a 2020 bullet journal. It might not be beautiful but it needs to be functional. I set up my new journal last night and it was the quickest, most minimal set up in the 4 years I have been journalling. It’s not pretty no and I did rip out one page (and promptly lost 3, why do I never learn) but it looks like it might just work for me. A few spreads I still refer back to like birthdays, dates to remember for the calendar year and a general packing list and I was away with the monthly set ups.
I use plain old biros at work because I have to be able to write quick and I soon realised I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. In fact, the bleeding isn’t an issue, my handwriting got nicer and there’s something satisfying about drawing grids with straight lines and rulers which I never did with my artsy hand drawn journals of 2017. For my life bujo (still very much feel the need to have separate), I cracked out the good old black biro and a ruler and it really hasn’t offended me as much as I would have thought back in the day. No frills, no fancy, just a decent to do list and no need to carry a special pen around with me or formulate a cute border.
The only set ups I am doing for future planning is to create a master to do list for each month, to keep me on track of what needs to be achieved but has no particular date set. I am determined to make 2020 the year I write all my birthday cards for the month in one go and have them waiting with stamps on by the front door ready to go on the appropriate week. I am determined to buy presents the month before they are needed, to have my car booked in for it’s MOT well in advance, to do insurance quotes beforehand and just get mega organised so I can actually have some downtime, something that has majorly eluded me in 2019.
I am also bringing back the monthly calendar which I removed from my journal in 2019, along with removing a wall calendar in my house, something I have decided should make a comeback for 2020 too. I didn’t really use my calendar spreads in 2018, opting instead to go to our Google calendar but for this year, I have decided to bring it back and use it in a future planning kind of way, as a way of seeing in one glance what is coming up and what needs to be done.
Other than that? I don’t intend to plan out in advance at all. I want my bullet journal to fit my life in the way it is now. If one week I have a lot on, I’ll be able to make a summary spread like I do in work and maybe if it’s extra busy I can whack a quick daily to do list on there too. There’ll be ample space for planning the wedding, for the millions of ideas rolling around in my head or for the packing lists I rely on so heavily. I just want my bullet journal this year to be an extension of me that I flit to so easily, not another thing I find a chore to complete. I want to go back to writing a few notes to myself, or jotting down a few after dinner tasks in my lunch break, instead of finding it a tie to fill in and make look pretty.
Maybe it won’t work and you’ll find me here next year giving up on the trend altogether or having another go at revamping it. Or maybe it won’t work and you’ll find me here next year reverting back to the heavily illustrated format of years gone by because I’ve had a really chilled 2020 and I miss the creativity. Or maybe, just maybe, it will work and you’ll find me here next year chatting about how right I was. Let’s wait and see.
