Hello!

I’ve not really talked about my bullet journal (I don’t think?) since I wrote the post with tips on how to start one, so I thought I’d share an update on how different my journal looks now and things I’ve learnt in the three months of using it so far.

Well firstly, I still love it – I’m really making the most of the different sections of my journal to help myself feel more organised and sort my life out a bit.

At first I said I wish I’d done the monthly logs at the beginning of each month rather than all in one go but actually I now prefer it this way because I can see and map out my months consequently and having it all in one place is so useful for my brain, who can’t function unless something is written down on paper in front of me. These monthly logs have been particularly useful in the last month and a bit because I’ve been so manic busy. Having these layouts calms me down a little bit.

 This is how my spreads looked like at the beginning – I had my weekly lists and I just listed the days as they went along without much forward planning or really knowing how to use my layout to my benefit.

This is when my weekly spread started to adapt into what it looks like now with my weekly to do list on the left and the whole week listed out on the right with the weekly list divided up into daily tasks.

This is when I started to think about presentation and give the fonts and banners I’d seen on Instagram and in Bullet Journal facebook pages a go, without masses of success.

And this is my spread for this week – I’m really proud of how it works and how well it works for me and the different things I’ve tried out and how I’m getting to be more explorative and creative with my journal. I allow myself to take an hour to plan out my week and spend time making my week look pretty and planning it so I’m doing a sensible amount each day, otherwise I won’t get it done and then I get really sad about not getting stuff done and I feel less inclined to do anything else.

I’m battling a lot of personal insecurity and stress right now so giving myself time to design and plan my week is really quite therapeutic for me.

But my bullet journal isn’t just a diary and planner – I use it to write all sorts of lists and make all sorts of plans, such as when I made a four week food and fitness plan (that I mostly stuck to) that was nice for me to really get to grips with controlling my diet and planning how much exercise I did. I barely did any exercise but I mostly stuck to the eating plan. Whether I was healthy and fit is irrelevant – the plan is pretty!

I like to use my journal for food planning and I had a go at keeping a habit tracker in February and the beginning of March but I found that rather than incentivising me to get things done, it just made me feel guilty for not doing them so I haven’t made an April habit tracker but I think when I’m a bit better in my brain it might be quite helpful for me as a way to make myself make some things habit.

I also like to use my journal as a sort of scrapbook – so I’ve got this cute postcard and these sweet little messages that my boyfriend made for me when I was really busy and needed to make sure I didn’t forget my lunch box.

I also kept every single one of my train tickets when I was commuting into London for my BBC Three work experience – I had to turn this into two double page spreads so the first one is all my tickets to London from Southampton while all these tickets are the ones that got my to and from Peterborough when I had to be with my family.

This is something I’m a little ashamed to share because it shows how little I’ve put into planning content for my blog recently (it’s on my list for this week!) but I’m thinking of combining this calendar with one for my video content next month.

It’s stuff like this that I really love about the bullet journal concept – you can have a go at something one month and adapt it slightly the next month or scrap it completely and it’s purely about whatever works for you. My bullet journal isn’t very pretty in terms of calligraphy or cursive or typography but I’m working with what I am good at and what I can do.

And that mostly includes using a huge variety of coloured pens.

I hope you enjoyed this post, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it so do let me know in the comments!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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