Can open. Worms. Everywhere!

If you are new to this term and haven’t looked this up on Google or Pinterest yet, please do so now… see what I mean?

I am not going to step on other blogger’s toes and get into “How to Bullet Journal”. There is a lot of material out there on this already. I am just here to show my approach and share a few things that really helped to clear the waters for me, ultimately hoping to help you a bit too.

I started this process a few years ago, but took a small break for a year. My sister just picked it up in the fall, and she has inspired me to start again, comparing our fun pages is my favourite part! I find this process to be very helpful in keeping me on track and for holding myself accountable for some day-to-day things that I might otherwise let slip by. However, there are so many ways to use a bullet journal that it could be insanely overwhelming to get started.

A lot of people use their bullet journals for life planning: soccer practice, grocery lists, meal plans, food tracking etc. I have a calendar that I use for some of that, so that wasn’t the direction that interested me when it came to this. I wanted to get myself into my sketchbook more, so I wanted to do things that would help with that. I have created trackers for movies and books, trackers for day-to-day things (did you do the dishes?), and trackers for my Hues and Tones socials.

Things I record in my Journal/Sketchbook:

• Best Moment of the Day
• Thoughts on my Day
• Research I am doing
• Illustration ideas
• Reading
• Movies/TV
• Chores
• Habits (exercise, hobbies, money spending)
• Social Posts
• Studio Time
• “Check It” (things I did but want to stop doing, ex the doom scroll)
• Quotes I love from books and movies

My best advice for anyone starting out in bullet journaling is don’t try to do it all. Ask yourself a few questions.

• What brought you to bullet journaling in the first place?
• What is it that you want to track/record/learn in doing this?
• Where are you comfortable: artsy, all about the words, both?

Once you have figured out what you want to track, and how you want to track it, find yourself a beautiful book to use, buy all the markers (!), and have at it! Keeping in mind that none of this is set in stone. The way I did this style of journalling when I started, is 100% different from how I do it now. I continue to reassess what I am doing. “I did that thing everyday, do I need to track it anymore?” Sometimes some of my tracking felt like a chore or something I was filling out because it was there, so I took it out. If there’s no end value, why stress yourself out doing it?

The scariest thing to starting this activity is all of the results on the internet searches, and more often, people getting hung up on the “rules”. SURPRISE! There aren’t any. There is no “real” way to Bullet Journal, only the way you want to do it. I take all Pinterest results as a suggestion. My sister has made some WICKED pages based off of searches for completely different tracking suggestions. It’s not fun if you stress yourself out doing it. Go with what you feel, track anything (or nothing) that you want, and have fun with this new activity/tool/assistant… how ever you see it… and grow with it!