Recrudescence

All I knew about bullet journaling before was that it’s artsy and creative, very pretty to look at. I also deduced from researching before that it demanded so much of one’s time. I wanted to try it but time was holding me back.

After working so much on my personalized planner in college, I decided that I was done with all these personalized artsy planners and journals. Especially then that most of my 8-5s were dedicated to work and weekends were meant for rest with the fam, and the occasional dates with the boyfriend.

Early in December last year, however, I chanced upon a post that mentioned bullet journals as a way to be organized. This made me start thinking about giving it a try. Especially now that I was leaving my job. (Surprise, surprise!) And so, a few days later, I started researching on how bullet journals were made. There are a lot of tutorials on the internet. Instagram and Pinterest are the best sites to look into. #BuJo

​There’s this one particular tutorial that I liked best because it felt like a “BuJo-for-Dummies” kind of tutorial. It’s from BuzzFeed.

You will get confused at first as there are words that have a different meaning in bullet journaling. (Hello, migrate.) After my first round of researching (and confusion), I started having doubts on being able to commit to it, so I postponed on making it. Eventually, I forgot about it.

Then, a week into the year, Pocket reminded me of the BuJo tutorials I saved, and so I scanned them again and mentally created my own BuJo. That weekend, I found myself with lots of time. Not wanting to waste it, I grabbed one of my empty notebooks and just started.

I used this small notebook (7.75×3.75) I had for years. I bought it because it was composed of different types of paper. It had 24 lined cream pages, dotted brown pages, black pages, brown gridded pages and cream perforated pages.

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I covered some areas I didn’t like with brown paper, paint and dymo. (No before photos, oops.)

The inside of the notebook starts with the key and a 2018 goals/to-do list.

The next pages contain mostly the usual pages you see in BuJos. First 2 for the index, the next pages for future logs and the next are for collections.

I have 4 collections at the moment: Books I’d like to read, movie’s I’d like to see, TV Series I want to watch and other stuff to check out.

I swear Pocket is the best because they have this weekly newsletters that introduces me to new things. Here’s one: Unsplash. It’s a site of beautiful stock photos that are FREE! I loved it immediately. You guys should check it out. EDIT: It was not Pocket, rather it was Medium that introduced me to Unsplash. Pocket is equally great too (esp. its app!). Check em out, and subscribe!

Next came the monthly log. With it are to-do’s, goals, a mood tracker and a gratitude tracker.

Then there’s the weekly and daily log. Every week, I plan my groceries/shopping list and meals. I also have weekly goals and to-do lists. The designs are random as I make them as I go.

Future spreads shall be posted on my Instagram.

Creating these first few pages were enjoyable and very relaxing. It’s flexible too so you don’t have to be pressured about being too much on track about it. Also, you don’t have to be artsy. You just have to make what works for you. I recommend that you guys give it a try​.