Starting a Bullet Journal: How I Found Relaxation Through Organizing!

I am SO EXCITED for FEBRUARY!!!

Okay, so this is probably one of the weirdest things to get excited about, but seriously. I actually squealed out LOUD this morning when I realized that February is almost here!

Why? Ummmm… Just because I started a bullet journal* project with my daughter a couple of weeks ago and February is when I will start officially using it to track things. Just daily type things like when I workout, use the fasciablaster, daily tasks, monthly goals, keep track of books I’ve read, movies I watched (and if I loved them or not). Silly fun stuff like that makes me so ridiculously happy. Plus, the act of just designing each page, drawing and doodling and all that is really fun and relaxing to me.

My daughter Paris (who has been trying to get on steemit for a month with no success!) encouraged me to give it a try. I had been finding the whole idea popping up everywhere, but it just felt overwhelming. I’ve tried the whole ‘planner’ thing before with pre-printed planners and just couldn’t seem to ever get into it. The thought of having to design my own just seemed like TOO MUCH WORK.

However, the thought of doing something that we could do together sounded like it was worth a try. We spent almost three hours together talking on our first go! (The two of us can always talk for hours, but this added a feel of extra productivity.)

I immediately knew that having a solid journal type book was out of the question for me. I would always stress out about getting it perfect. This was my first ‘change’ from how I’d seen it done before. I bought a small A5 size binder and ordered the dotted pages for it. That way I had the freedom to get rid of a page (or add pages) without stressing about it.

On another day I was on a date with my other daughter @abyni who needed to go to the Hobby store for a school project. They had things on sale that looked like they would add to the fun of designing pages, so I picked up a few stencils to help:

There is an “Official Bullet Journal” way to do things, but I don’t really have a typical life and don’t feel the need to track every single day or week in my life. Most of my days are fairly similar and I don’t stick to a timed schedule, so I didn’t bother with those pages.

Instead I just created a page where I can put the lists of things I want to accomplish at my own pace on each of the days of the week:

I knew that I wanted to track my fitness goals for the year (and I am SO close to doing a full pull up already!)

And of course I really want to track my moods and my sleep. Having finally almost conquered my life long insomnia problems, I still like seeing how I sleep... and how THAT affects my moods:

As I mentioned yesterday in my post about Dealing with Social Anxiety I really want to make sure that I'm focusing on self care and paying attention to what I need and when I need to take time for myself. Since needing self care usually means that I can't think of anything to even DO or start with, I wanted to make a page that I can turn to for finding ideas. I've learned that taking care of myself means that I have more of me to give!

Getting older and dealing with all of the Bullshit of Getting Older: Perimenopause means that things like periods and all things hormonal are ALL over the place. I thought it might be good to start paying a little more attention to that.

A page for keeping track of the books I read, because I am so bad about reading tons of books and forgetting the names of the authors/series that I wanted to read more of!

Last but not least, this is one page that I have for noting the things that I am thankful for. I am also making a page for each of my kids, grandkids and my husband as well that I want to take notes on throughout the year, but this is my "General" thankful page.

Thus far, those are the pages I have ready to go. In the coming weeks, I'll find what works, what doesn't and add pages for keeping track of daily exercise reps, fasciablasting... and who knows what else! In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the excuse to get offline, unplug for a while and focus on my artistic side with no pressure of worrying about anything else in the moment!

_{Credit for the Official name "Bullet Journal" goes to Ryder Carroll and Bullet Journal®}

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Other Writing of mine that you might be interested in:

My LIVE! #freewrite Experience

Her Fondest memory

The Secret Me

Her Eyes: A Love Story