May 2023 bullet journal and routines.
Hello my friends. One way that I prioritize my routines and staying on task is through my Bullet Journal, it's my whole world. I've been using the bullet journal method by Ryder Carrol in some way, shape or form since about 2012. I started out with a mini binder after having printable calendars for my big school binder for my assignments in my first year's of collage, back when I was pre nursing and the mom of a 15 month old. It was a lot and I had to do something to keep organized.
Flash forward, this is May 2023 and that 15 month old baby is now going to be a 12 year old darling. She made my cover page this really nice flower, she does some of the voice over in this video which is super nice for this part especially. She told me "it's from other flowers I've done in the past" and that she's "familiar" with my pens and colors. I use Crayola SuperTips and Zebra Mildliners for most of my journals and she gets to benefit from having a stationary obsessed mom. Now, when starting out in Bullet Journaling you will be tempted to buy all the things, that's OK but simply put you don't need all the things. I bought my pack of super tips for under $20, and I even think we found them on the after Christmas clearance and scored the 50 piece kit. The bad thing about the super tips in my opinion is that there is no color code for them, the pens aren't marked with the color number or name. So, as in the case of a previous journal entry (flashback to my How To Train Your Dragon spread) the main color will have 2-4 variations so your not to sure what is a "true" color or a variant, for some colors like brown (my problem with that spread) I couldn't pinpoint the true brown verses something like a sandy brown. In this May 2023 spread that doesn't matter as much but it's a critic that I felt inclined to share. My daughter uses a varity of colors here pink, purple, blue, yellow, green, orange and more. I told her that whatever colors she used here would be the colors of my theme as a whole. Thankfully you really can't go wrong if you enjoy a rainbow of colors.
This spread is very simple and functional, like I said in the voice over for the video, I try to maximize my spreads by doing as simple as possible lately. This was just over an hour and a half before editing. I try to get this all done during nap time and I think we started out at nap time but you'll see two sets of little hands which means it was not in fact nap time at points of this filming process. I enjoy doing a nice cover page and real simple set up, which is why my calender spreads haven't changed in months. For this journal, which is a Scribbles That Matter in A5 size, my calendar boxes are 6x7 and usually I will make boxes 6x6 especially if there are six weeks in the month. This month only has 5 weeks and at that only 3 of them are totally complete weeks, if I started my journal on a Monday the calendar would have a more visually appealing look to it but it's OK. Touching on that for a moment, you can start your calendar anyway you want, I just prefer to do mine Sunday-Saturday as that's what I'm used too the most. One of my favorite bullet journal creators does start her calendars on Mondays, and goes from there. I have even seen creators omit out the weekends because it doesn't suit there purpose for there journal. Me and my daughter discussed this in the voice over for the video but when your doing a bullet journal you can put what you want and need in it and keep out the fluffy stuff you don't use. For me I keep a garden log and habit trackers as standard things but you may not need a garden guide because you don't have a green thumb. That's just fine. That's the beauty of customizing your journal.
Speaking of customizable, this month I put a double page dashboard for my buisness pages. This is something I never thought I would need in here, I've gone from a grid of boxes that were 8x8 to a four column page, using the pre-ruled center lines that come in the Scribbles That Matter journal.
Like I mentioned in this voice over my column are big enough to do time blocking, which I'd essentially how your Google calendar is set up. I have a dedicated video to time blocking within my Bullet Journal, and yes it was a Star Trek theme, so it fit very well. When your time blocking you basically just put your start time and end time on your box and essentially "block out" that portion of time because it's time that's already counted for. If you would like a more detailed post about time blocking just let me know and I'll make a better explanation post.
Other sections in this spread include my meals log and mood trackers. Mood and food go hand in hand, most of us also don't know where our cravings come from but the act of mindful eating helps us understand both the food were choosing and the mood were in. Jan Chosen Bays MD has a great book on Mindful Eating that helps break this connection down into much simpler terms. For my mood tracker I went with the flowers to reference my cover page and made sure to give enough petals that I can put down individual mood ratings if needed, although having a happy mood all day is just fine as well, I'll take the pink flower. I have a lot of pinks, peach and blues on my list and in the future I'll make sure to put a color to correspond to tired.
My weekly logs consist of smaller boxes, 8x10, and the first week spread doesn't have a Sunday but it has a TO DO list (I'll use it at a catch all to do) since I had the extra space. I also keep my reading log, or reading list, in a small box as well. Sometimes I don't even use all the space in my log and other times I use 10x the space in my log, it really just depends on the week.
Another thing I add in my journal is a spiritual page, this can be a Bible study page but for me it's a mini Book Of Shadows page where I keep a list of things I will do for the month at hand or have done for the month, I also will keep a shopping list of sorts to get ready for any upcoming celebration (sabbath) this just helps me when I feel like I'm not excelling in my faith stay positive that in fact I'm doing a lot. A lot of my practice involves the earth and food, my garden is my sacred space and it's served me well and I hope to be able to expand on it very soon.
Last page in my Bullet Journal is a reflection page, I've done multiple versions of this page since adding it to this Journal in November 2022. The reflections page just let's me have a spot to write down what is going well, what happened or what I'm looking forward to doing. This is another practice in mindfulness and by putting it (for me) on one page I have a good amount of space to write and even have the option of putting in headers of interest and reflecting on that. This is something I'm looking forward to passing on as a hand me down to my kids since most of my reflections revolve around them.
I hope this was in depth but not way too overly done, and I hope you got something out of this blog to put in your Bullet Journal or even trying out a bullet journal. If you have any questions feel free to leave me a comment over here or even on the video above.
Thanks for joining me. Many Blessings to you.
