one month in bullet journaling

I stumbled across the concept of bullet journaling in late 2015 when I saw these incredible photos on Tumblr of people using these customizable planners. They had gorgeous calligraphy and hand-lettering, beautiful photos pasted in, and these incredibly coordinated color schemes. I was completely obsessed, but also incredibly intimidated. I wanted to try out bullet journaling, but I was also so overwhelmed nor did I understand the weird bullet system. So I stuck to conventional planners and just kept it to my admiration of beautiful hand-lettering.

However, at the end of last year I discovered there was a whole bullet journal community on YouTube, and my obsession hit a fervor once again. I found a super cute pink dotted journal on Amazon and decided 2017 was the time to try out bullet journaling! So, now here's a reflection on February 2017, my first ever month using a bullet journal. I tried a lot of things, some of which I'm pleased with, some of which I won't be repeating.

This was my title page, which honestly I don't love. I saw this doodle on pinterest for roses, and just sort of ran with it. I don't love them on this page, but as the month progressed I drew them in a way I liked much better. I didn't really plan a theme for the month besides pink, but the roses ended up being the most prominent.

This was my monthly layout. I added in the flowers on the top right later when I was better at drawing them. It was a good reference point to have, but frankly when I need to look at an overall month I tend to just use my phone or computer.

Something that's really popular with bullet journals is a habit tracker and mood tracker. I wasn't interested in a mood tracker, although maybe some month in the future I'll try it. As for a habit tracker, there were only a couple things I was really interested in doing, so I threw some on there that I didn't do at all. Whoops! I did put in a line for blogging, which I'm only doing on Saturdays right now, but may increase in the summer. We'll see! I also hate all the doodles around my habit tracker. But I liked it for tracking my water and journalling. Also, I just decided a blank page for doodling throughout the month would be nice. I tried a couple things, and I also used it to wipe my highlighter when it got pen ink on it.

Here's my first week! This was incredibly simplistic, but it did the job! I decided to try a Sunday-Saturday layout, but by the end of the month I decided to return to Monday-Sunday as it was just a tad more efficient. This layout is no fun, so I decided to keep trying different methods throughout the month.

2 years ago I created a little tracker for Best Picture Oscar nominees, and I wanted to try it again. I actually loved this page even though I didn't manage to watch all the films. I think pages like this will be really fun to experiment with in the future! Also, I definitely want to see The Shape of Water and Phantom Thread very soon!

This was my second weekly layout and probably my least favorite. It was very pretty and I liked the bit of lettering I did. However, it was totally unpractical. The columns were so narrow, and I didn't like writing in them. For something more vertical, I would definitely need to keep less space between columns and combine Saturday and Sunday.

One of my favorite things about bullet journaling is getting the chance to just try things out on all the blank pages! I don't really like the one on the left because it was really a spur of the moment hand-lettering inspired by something I saw on Twitter. Angie Thomas wrote one of my favorite books last year, so I definitely wanted to do something to honor her after she was being attacked by twitter trolls. The piece on the right was inspired by Amanda Rach Lee, my favorite bullet journal YouTuber.

I'm so bad at watching television, so I made a little mini tracker to catch up on the shows I most needed to! Although, fuck the Bachelor after everything that happened with Arie in the finale, I'm glad I didn't watch this season. The crossed out page is something I used to help me make sense of all my medical bills, and I didn't want to publicly share it!

This was definitely my favorite weekly spread of the month! It was the perfect amount of space and I felt like I had really nailed the rose doodles by this point.

I've been getting quite into Korean beauty so I went through a really detailed list of all the steps and the products I'm interested in trying, as well as what I already own.

Something I want to do more frequently is letter Bible verses. I loved how this one turned out and it was very meditative. Also I started writing some things out for my upcoming Chicago Trip in April.

I also really loved this spread as well! The one thing I really learned during this experiment is that I need space for writing. So much inspiration I find on tumblr and Pinterest are gorgeous, but look incredibly impractical when it comes to actually planning out my life and work.

I LOVED how these pages turned out. Bullet journaling offers the ability to be partially a scrapbook as well. I definitely want to use higher quality paper because printing out photos has been so fun and I've been trying to incorporate it more and more. This was a celebration of the fabulous Galentine's Day party my friends threw!

More hand lettering! I loved how both of these turned out. The left is a quote from "All the Stars" a song I was obsessed with in February (and still listen to!) The right is a quote from An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. This line just struck me so hard as I was reading so I had to letter it.

I was realizing that Sunday-Saturday wasn't working out for me, so I decided to use the end of the month to switch into a Monday-Sunday weekly log. I did a super short February weekly, and then transitioned March's first week into an abbreviated one as well. As you can tell, I was really loving drop shadows, definitely an influence from Amanda Rach Lee!

Even though I journal nearly everyday, I decided to print out some photos and due a quick wrap up on how the month went for me. It was so fun writing this and choosing pictures. It was a great time of reflection and it made me so happy.

I continued something I had done in 2016, which was to track some of my favorites from the month. I did books, films, and music in the past, and then last minute I decided to write some of my beauty favorites down as well. I filled in the caps with some quotes from some of my favorites, which I'm still working on!

All in all, this month of experimentation has been so fun. I'm glad that I finally bit the bullet and decided to try bullet journaling. It's so cathartic and meditative for me. I do miss having a finished planner where I can add everything all at once in the far future, since I don't like adding a ton to my future log - although I probably could. Anyway it's still an experiment, but it's going well. I'm loving what I'm doing for March so far, and I'm constantly scrounging the Internet for more ideas and inspiration. It's been fun!