Let me take you all back to the end of last year.
I had just joined a bookclub, purely out of greed and the need to get the free gifts for joining (that in hindsight was probably not even worth the postage you had to pay for them). I were in it for about two months, regullary checking back in just to make sure I cancelled all main books (YOU ARE NOT GETTING MY MONEY!), when the info on the main book for the new year came out.
What was this bullet journal thing? A creative and nice way to make up journals for the year? I love drawing, I am into scrapbooking. This just seemed perfect!
And it is not the first time I wanted to try getting my mundane boring life under control and make sure I never forgot my non existant meetings. Earlier that year I got a ring binding journal, where you put in a calender for the year and then put in the rest as you want. Then you add cute stickers and have all the fun planning nothing. Which was just what I did with that. The pre printed (expensive) papers and journals I put in was just not right for me. It was not the things I needed and I ended up putting it in a shelf and forgetting it for half a year. Eventually I took it out again and tossed away all the calenders and pre-made planners, ordered some cheap blank papers and pretty dividers from ebay and set it up for taking notes for random things instead, and ended up using it a lot more.
So here I am again, checking out just what this Bullet journal thing is. Spreading across the mighty internet, doing all the googling for the best explanations of what you do with a bullet journal. After days of research, I decided.
The bookclub would get my money.
However, the only thing worse than my greed, was my lack of patience and my cursed ability to look up tests to find what is the best. Curse it!
The bookclub did not get my money. Because I got too impatient waiting for 2018, and ended up buying a starter set online for a quarter of the price and with both pens, colors and a Leuchtturm, a bullet journal that legends are told of online.
Under one week, and it was already in my home, ready for me to shape up and become a true organized adult.
Excited and ready to go, I wasted no time in getting started. I joined a bullet journal for beginners group on facebook, scavaged pinterest for all the pretty layouts I could steal of the original artists dead bodies.
When 2018 came, I had finished the pages for January, and set up pages upon pages with to-do lists and what movies I wanted to watch. Check lists for shows I wanted to watch and all the creative things I wanted to do this year. It was all ready for perfection! Nothing could stop me now!
Yet, I did not get more organized. It felt like all the things I wrote down I would do, ended up not being done on principle. It was like each and every thing written down was now jinxed, and would never be done. Like I looked at it in spite and went: Hah! I have to do you? Watch me not even try!
It started with the mood tracker, where I was supposed to color in my mood each day. It was something everyone had in their bullet journal, so I made a cute one with Mew from Pokemon. I were quite proud of it. But I lost interest in it after just one month. Then I stopped filling in the hundreds of different things for my weekly and monthly spreads. I had a bloodsugar tracker (for the ebur diabeetus), that one I did follow the longest, but it ended in the end as well. I had three different to-do lists each week. Stuff to do, things to remember and things to learn. I had a spot each day where I could write in the weather that day, and what I ate for dinner.
In the end it was all too much. It was fun to make, but when it came to doing it, I ended up failing, and the shame over failing made me stop making new spreads for each month, and in the end I just put it away. The book were a failure to me now. The book had curled together under my shame (and heavy use of watercolors), and it was a disgrace to me, like a child leaving home and coming home like a washed out drug addict.
Now and again I tried again, just to see if my love for my defiled child would return, but it was not to be. He would never be the same, and I started using him to test out the ideas of more minimalistic spreads. Simple black and white layouts where it can be simple and no need to spend hours and days on one week.
It was just before summer now, and my desire to try again was burning passionately. But I would not make the same mistakes! I needed a better book, and changed brand to Scribbles that Matter. The other legendary beast of bullet journaling. I had to use Amazon again for the first time in ages, as I had tried ordered first from a shady chinese side and got scammed. My addiction makes me blind and foolish.
To be honest thought, when it came, I were as excited, and I used weeks setting it up. However, I went at it another way this time. I knew I didn’t care about keeping dates and blodsugar in a book like this. I wanted it to keep my ideas in one place. If I used the creative idea of drawing up the pages I wanted myself, I could control my ideas and map them out for myself. So I made a whole book just with plots, my different stories, and all the important characters I created and loved. I even started drawing them and got a small polaroid printer so I could paste in all of the character portraits.
Yes, this was what I had wanted to begin with, a creative outlet and a place to put it all together. The book were soon filled, and I ordered a new one to try planning one more time. And this time it did work better, but I still fell out of it eventually. My attention span is that of a gold fish, and by now the things I put up in the future log is everything else than done. I did it again.
I set goals for myself.
This is probably where my planning would have stopped as well, if not for the fact I came across some super cheap bullet journals at Flying tiger. Like super cheap, just a quarter of the price as the legendary ones! So I got two, in pretty colors and with a pack of stickers! (Let us not ever mention my sticker addiction that oririginated from this new hobby) Once home, I decided that I had the time, and I should just set up the four last months of the year, and then if it worked better, I could get a new scribbles that matter over Christmas.
I think the saying 3rd time is the charm really fit here, this was my third time trying using it as a calender, and I did an important change. I did not put in goals. I just drew up the months, and made simple weekly spreads with nothing but a spot for each day, and one spot where I can write in if there is something I want to do.
As I did this change, I realized something. I had enough space each day to write what I were doing, and what happened. So I could look back and know what I did each of those days. One week I actually forgot to write, so I went back and wanted to write in what had happened each of those days.
I didn’t remember a thing. I lacked the ability to remember and place what had happened on the different days, but reading over the weeks where I had written it down, I remembered right away having done it.
Finally I had found what I needed. I didn’t need a bullet journal to tell myself what I needed to do each day. I need it to let myself know what I had done each day. I needed it to have a place to jot down some creative ideas now and again, and maybe write small short stories with pretty pictures and writing.
Soon just two months left of the year in my book, and I have written almost each day. I write what happens at work and how much I work, and have made a habit of adding small details. Was anyone over that day? Did something happen at work? Was I anywhere that day? Is there anything important I really should remember?
So, in the end I got no control over my life. I just ended up feeling ashamed I didn’t keep up with it when I put so much work into it. However, that is okay, as I sit back with a hobby that is actually quite calming and nice when you can sit down with it for some hours.
Control is not really needed when you have been able to deal in organized chaos instead.
I also forgot to cancel the main book from the bookclub this month. The bastards got my money in the end…
Here is some pics of my plagiarism for october and november.
Trolsk 