The Ol' Bujo

[alaterdate]

I've been bullet journaling for about five or six years now, but I think I'm tired of it 😕 Tired of drawing my layout every week. And I know you can just do it day to day. I did it that way initially and I tried to go back to it recently, but even that's not happening for me. When I do it that way my future planning suffers too which is why I started doing a weekly layout in the first place. Hell, I don't draw my own monthly calendar anymore either, I bought a pack of stickers for a dollar instead. I don't take notes, I don't habit track, I don't make lists, I barely backlog track when I remember to look at those pages. I only write in a goals page then don't touch the journal for a month. My work schedule and release dates for media I'm interested in are all written on my wall calendar. The only thing that made me keep trying to use my bullet journal was that my weeks could start on Mondays (like they're supposed to), but I just found an agenda that starts weeks on Mondays ssssooooo I'm going to use that and I guess last year was my last year of Bujo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think I don't have time where I can just pull out my notebook and sit with it for a bit. I could make time, but I don't want to. I want to use that time for other things now. It might also be that I don't really jive with the notebook I moved into, but I'll see how this agenda goes 🤞

Comments

[artabria]

I tried bullet journaling last year and I think I lasted like two weeks. Too much like keeping a diary, I guess, which I never got into.

I'm a goblin that writes things down in scraps of paper and then leaves them next to her bed. I see them every morning, so I don't forget. A flawless system! xD

Maybe I'll keep a journal and try to write down drabbles and plot ideas every other day, but no journaling for me except what I already do in this blog, :P

[alaterdate]

You should definitely try to keep a drabble journal! It's always handy too, to have a notebook to write dialogue or plot ideas that just pop up in your head out of nowhere. I always write headers for what story they're for and then color code them later. (I have so much stationery I still need to use it! 😂)

That's another thing too, everything I used to keep in my bullet journal I've now spread into other places, like making journal entries here and having my backlog lists here too. & that's how I prefer it recently so I don't mind not using the bullet journal method anymore. I still like writing in notebooks and I still know where everything is. Like your scraps of paper, if it works it works! 😂

[queenlua]

funny timing. i was just looking up bullet journaling a couple days ago, because i want some new organizational system, but... idk, not sure it would work for me unless i *heavily* modified it.

i'm actually pretty happy with my aggressively-color-coded gcal for "keeping track of appointments" and "keeping a pulse on where i'm spending my time / energy and checking in on that." but i'm doing a less-great job of, like, keeping notes for related projects together? capturing information on [new subject X] and logging it in a coherent location? etc?

part of it's gotta be that i'm increasingly moving to cloud services for keeping track of my writing and files and folders and such, which is great for *convenience* (yay i can see my shit on any random computer, on my phone, etc), but less-great since i lose the natural metaphor of a computer desktop—filing, shuffling, prioritizing.

i'll let you know if i automagically find some decent solution :P

[alaterdate]

I've been moving into cloud services too and I think that's why my bullet journal has become so useless to me. If I forget it at home then I'm shit out of luck, but my phone is always in my damn hand these days and I can just pop into OneNote or gcal. A couple of times I've even made a stop at the library on a whim without my laptop and could just log on to one of their computers and do some work on google docs & such.

I think OneNote could still use some improvements, but I've started using it heavily over the past year and it's taken the place of the space where I keep all my notes/ideas/thoughts. I've budgeted in there, planned dinners, brainstormed resolutions, wrote quotes from books I was reading, notes from books I was reading, planned out a Minecraft town lmao. It doesn't have everything I need in it like my schedule or how many words I've written a day bc I've simply put those things in other places and spreadsheets. I have just become increasingly *online* so to speak.

Sometimes I have the urge to write in a notebook though and have the freedom of having little tiny scribbles and notes everywhere so I still keep one or two notebooks "active." I think bullet journaling is well suited to modification because it's an analog system and you can make it work however you like. Like placing modules, you can see everything you need/want on a single page instead of having to flip around. Which I think has become one of the problems I'm facing with having moved into a smaller notebook. If I'm going to have to flip around I might as well just open apps where I don't have to draw all the lines every week 😂 I encourage everyone to give Bujo a try though, it worked for me for 5ish years of schooling and work and hobbies. I've tried many different layouts over the years too.
Persona 5 Themed Bullet Journal (2017 July)
School Related Bullet Journal
pic.twitter.com/LnKebOaIU9

If you do automagically discover a wonder system, please let me know! 😊

[queenlua]

omg, that Persona 5 themed one is so pretty and fun! these are Art, haha, thanks for sharing them!

[alaterdate]

Oh thank you!!! 😊 I had a lot of fun with it