I’m a planner kind of girl.

I couldn’t tell you the last year I lived without owning a planner and using a calendar.  I’ve researched planners.  I’ve purchased one planner in January and bailed on it by March, paying the cash again to buy another, more useful one, before spring.  I’ve stood for a literal hour at Barnes & Noble, holding various options, considering page texture and page weight, placement of dates and the layout of weeks.  Does it have lines? Are there spots for weekly meal planning?  I have so many opinions (and not just about calendars but everyone already knows all that).

One of my favorite go-to calendars for years has been one created by Amy Knapp.  It’s so well done.  There’s space monthly and then weekly, a grocery list and a meal list.  It’s never been especially pretty, although next year’s design is better than I’ve seen in a few years.  It’s a calendar that I go back and forth between.  I love it, but it still leaves a little to be desired.

I have one calendar for regular life and one calendar for Travelers Rest Here.  They just don’t combine easily.  Every year I wonder if I should combine them, but in the TRH one I also keep all of my client billing info and it’s just too crowded to have that paired up with what’s for lunch on Tuesday and when London’s art class meets.

It’s an imperfect system, always.

I don’t like my calendars to be so huge that they don’t fit in my bag but I don’t want a tiny one either.  I carry my calendar just about everywhere.  I gave up using my iPhone as any sort of calendar years ago for many reasons.  One – the dots that alert you on the iPhone that something is happening that day stress me out.  There was never a day without a dot and I just couldn’t take it.  Also, I love the realness of an actual calendar.  I like writing things down and I love checking them off.  I like seeing the months and the years all laid out in a tidy way and the ability to see all of my plans at one glance.  Also, I like the liberty of being able to say, “Let me check my calendar” before I commit to anything.  Gives me time to think before I say yes to a commitment.

Last year Hilary started talking to me about the idea of a bullet journal.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Then, for  2018, I stood around at Barnes & Noble and decided to buy a new calendar – a style and brand I had never tried.  It was much prettier than my trusty Amy Knapp choice.  Yet it had a similar size and similar features.  I used it for a couple months but every day I was dissatisfied with it.  Each day I’d sigh and wish I had made a different choice.  But then I would feel guilty about wasting my money and all those blank pages on the calendar.

And then Hilary showed me a bullet journal she had created.

I finally watched a handful of videos that she sent me about the process of bullet journaling.

And, for fun, I bought a couple of blank journals and gathered the kids for a family night.  I showed them the videos and invited them to make their own bullet journals.

It was fun to do together and I figured I’d give it a solid couple of months to see what I thought.

Well – it’s November and I am still trying it out.

A bullet journal can take various forms, but basically – it’s just a homemade calendar in a journal.

 

 

You acquire a blank book – or one with dots or lines, your choice.  (I chose totally blank but I think with the next one I will go with light dots for reference perhaps.)  Also, if I keep using a bullet journal, I’m going to invest in a really lovely one, since I see it a hundred times a day.

And then you fill it in however you want.

You like an entire week on one page? Do that.

You want the year at a glance? Fine.

You want gigantic spaces for meals?  Lines for movies you want to see? A square for each glass of water you drank today?

All the choices.  Whatever makes you happy.  Do what works because you are the designer.

At first the freedom was overwhelming.

What do I want?  Do I like seven days on a two page spread or do I want less space? More space?

 

 

I think now, about five months in, that I have a pretty good layout going that works for me.  Each month I tried a different format to see what I like best and I think I have landed on a workable one.

It was definitely a progressive experience.  Still is.

I went through pages and styles that I felt were super mediocre.  But each week I could try out a different look and style!  Variety!  It’s my best friend.

 

 

If you are a true artist like my friend Hilary, you add pretty flowers and maybe even watercolor and it’s a legitimate work of art.

If you are a non perfectionist like me, you sometimes borrow your kid’s colored pencils during a read aloud and shade in some days if you feel like it.

Great pens make a big difference.  Microns are my favorite.  I like black typically and I like the various size options, but sometimes a color makes it way to the page.

It does require a little work each month on the front end, but I find that the time laying out the month’s grid and the weeks for that month is actually both therapeutic and calming – a feeling of literally orchestrating my month and seeing it all come together.  It’s a visual pretend game of being in control and of playing a game with the pieces of my life.  That appeals to me on all the levels.

I also like the flexibility of adding in extra pages here and there.  When we traveled to Gatlinburg this summer I made a special page with just the trip on it.  On that page I had our itinerary and our lodging and the codes or details for any event we had planned.  All in one handy spot. When I did Whole 30, I kept my notes in the journal so it was easily accessible and I could track how the process affected me.

 

 

Plus, I keep all of my journals and planners from all the years (what – you don’t?) so this bullet journal feels a little bit more like a diary than just a straight up calendar.

I put a page at the back of my journal for birthdays and one for Christmas ideas.  I have a page for blog post ideas and one with addresses.

And I love the fact that this calendar will be used until I run out of space – so it’s not necessarily going to end December 31.  I can just start a new one when the pages demand it.  Which doesn’t require me to do all of my calendar switching during Christmas break.  And that allows me to feel like the end of the year is less dramatic than my already dramatic sense of the passage of time can convince me it is.

When we did the bullet journals as a family, a couple of the kids got out the rulers and made straight and orderly lines.  Sticking with my non perfectionist tendencies, I don’t mind if my lines are a little squiggly or not perfectly equal across the page.

 

 

I don’t know if I’ll go back to a traditionally created calendar or not.  Maybe Amy Knapp will call my name again with her tidy straight lines and her detachable grocery list.

But for now, my bullet journal makes me happy. It meets my needs and satisfies my organizing desires.

What about you?  Are you a planner or an iPhone calendar fan?  Have you tried a bullet journal?

 

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