Bullet Journal

A recent "hobby" of mine has been bullet journaling.  I stumbled upon a Kindle library book about The Bullet Journal Method and I became interested as I have been hoping to move away from all the time I spend on the iPhone.  I also had wanted to have a paper record of the quilting projects I do and so I dove in.

It has been three months now and I find it an interesting exercise for creativity (in my case it is more like adopting other inspiring ideas), for keeping track of things that fall through the cracks and for having a record of Bible devotion times.  Because of the last reason I wasn't sure if my Bullet Journal would be a point of interest but I do find myself playing around with it daily so I thought I'd show you what I've been doing.

Each month Bullet Journals start with the month page and it is fun to try to be a bit artistic.  I also decided to keep a theme each month and for September I'm sticking to oak leaves and acorns...  The corner there on the September page is my attempt at tracking daily things...  Did I write in my Traffic Safety log, did I do my Duolingo?  Take my cholesterol medicine etc.  

The calendar page is just a simple calendar where hopefully I'm keeping track of things on a schedule...  And I got clever this month and decided to keep track of my sewing projects (I have three WIP this month) and if I work on one of them on any given day I color in part of the day's block.

This is my simple weekly page.  Days of the week slots to put chores and activities down.  A little corner in each for water intake.  My tiny acorns hopefully get a smiley face if the day has been good.  A to-do list that also doubles as a shopping list.  And the bottom half of it has evolved into a Fly Lady list of things to do this week (though I have some Fly Lady pages on previous pages but I got tired of turning to them all the time.)  

Occasionally, not often, I want to dabble with being artistic and this week my friend Kaoru-san reminded me of the hymn we used to teach the children when we taught Sunday School together and I decided to write it all out so I won't forget about it again.  "In the bulb there is a flower..." ♪♬

These two pages are daily pages...  A small block at the top of each page to jot down what I did that day or where I went or who I met (in case I ever really do come down with Covid 19 so I can tell someone whom I might have come in contact with).  The second block is the day's Bible verse that I write out.  And under that in my messy cursive are my thoughts about it.  I also choose a word for the day to hopefully keep the message in my mind at a glance.  Because of the Bullet Journal artistic possibilities I've bought a brush pen (the cheapest) and am trying to improve my handwriting and even learn new fonts.

Sometimes I'll have extra space at the bottom of the page (didn't do a lot of heavy thinking that day) and so I'll try my hand at a haphazard calligraphy, sometimes a quote from somewhere, sometimes a Bible verse, and I try to play around with my colored pencils.  Tetsu sees me with my colored pencils and says I look like a child playing with a coloring book.  After that comment I tend to do my bullet journal things away from his amused eyes...

 Let's see...  At the end of the month I try to get a month review page done and collect all those daily words into a collage.  Sometimes I add photos too...  

I keep a running Books Read page.  A monthly Gratitude page and I've got Quilting pages here and there as I start new things and finish a project.

So that is how I've been doing Bullet Journaling.  It is a hit and miss endeavor but it is pretty forgiving.  If something doesn't work out I just don't do it again (my menu planning page lasted a week!)