Hey guys!
Today I wanted to show off one of my most prized possessions--my bullet journal.
I actually started bullet journaling what like, 3 years ago now?
I actually almost completely filled my old one and back then I used to be a lot more
dedicated to making the pages colorful but I definitely like my new one a lot more.
I used to do a lot more of the journaling part of bullet journaling and do habit trackers,
life goals pages, gratitude pages, but nowadays I don’t really bother since I was never
good about keeping up with all those things.
The whole point of a bullet journal is making it useful and functional for you, and so many
bullet journals are insanely aesthetic but creating those pages can be a serious time
commitment and it was never worth it for me.
Ok so the journal I'm gonna show you covers from about September 2019 to now just for reference.
Let’s start with the cover page which features a quote from David Bowie, and this very very
sad table of contents that I forgot about approximately two days after I started it.
Now these are my weekly spreads.
You’ll notice a few things right off the bat--like the rainbow pattern which I actually
kept up for quite a while and the fact that with every passing week into the school year
the aesthetic value gets a little bit lower.
My handwriting is pretty terrible unless I try really hard and most of the time I was
making these pages in school when I was half dead--but I’m still proud that I could create
something somewhat aesthetic in spite of that.
I want you to remember that it doesn’t matter if your bullet journal doesn’t look like
the perfect ones you see on Instagram--as long as it sparks joy and makes your day more
functional then it’s doing its job.
Also I’ve covered up any information that’s too personal or doxxing with little post it
notes just in case you’re wondering what that all is.
We should take a little break and talk about the vague structure I use.
I have an overview of every month with mostly just the physical things I had to go to on
those days abbreviated.
The whole calendar set up was always kinda overkill for my purposes and this actually
gave me more space to write while also being more efficient.
Then, we’ve got the weekly pages.
I would bring a different one of these brush pens I have to school every Monday and make
these things during first hour.
I needed the majority of my space for these pages and I would only have one or two days
on each page since I had to fit in like 6 different classes worth of homework and usually
a lot of other crap I had to do after school.
The shaded in boxes are what I completed, half shaded are ones I half did, and the ones
with lines through them are the things I never got around to that day--and yeah...there are
a lot of these throughout this thing because I’m a major procrastinator.
Sometimes I would use an arrow to indicate it migrating over to the next day if I was
feeling fancy, but most of the time especially later on I would just leave the boxes perpetually
empty to avoid the shame of knowing that I didn’t really do any of that stuff which
maybe defeats the whole purpose, but whatever.
It was still good for me to write it all down to get organized.
Now, occasionally I would forget a day and sometimes if I forgot to bring my brush pen
I would forget to actually label the days and do the fancy fake calligraphy thing, but
for the most part I’m proud of myself for keeping this so up to date.
The key was elegant simplicity because the easier it is to do it every week the more
likely you are to do it.
Now let’s talk about the notes section.
My original plan was to overlay different colored post its every week and just write
little quotes and short reminders to myself but that didn’t happen after the like the
first week.
It instead became a word vomit of all of my notes for English when I realized I should
probably be taking notes so I don’t fail the quizzes a few months in.
Occasionally there’s also econ or psych notes when I would forget to bring those notebooks
to school.
Probably my favorite pages in this journal are my Thanksgiving and Christmas pages where
I would just write down everything I had to get done over those breaks and then make little
keys for the different colored highlighters.
The chaos was slightly reigned in up until like the new year and then I didn’t try
to hide it anymore.
These were the dark times where I ditched the aesthetic color schemes for mostly pencil
for some reason.
Here are where the doodles get more pronounced and the journal gets even more chaotic as
I got more bored in school And then...coronavirus struck.
But more importantly, I got a fountain pen and fell in love with it and stopped using
color all together for a solid few months since I only had black ink.
Also....this is Stu.
I think the whole thing is kinda fitting though--the journal got darker with the world around it.
Now comes my "I desperately need to study for AP tests" pages plus the doodles that
happened after I was finally done said tests.
You’ll also probably have noticed random blurbs that one of my friends wrote every
few pages from here on out.
This is my incomplete quotes page with room for it to grow, and finally a June cover page
which I felt inspired to do a few weeks ago.
Also, here’s a mini habit tracker for the first time in this journal.
That’s all I’ve got so far but I’ll be sure to make an update video when I fill
up the entire thing!
Overall, my bullet journal is messy, chaotic, and definitely not perfect, but I think it
has a personality of its own and it’s very symbolic of my life during these months in
its own way.
I hope this realistic flip through inspires you to keep up with your own bullet journal.
All I know is I’ve had a lot of fun with mine.
Let me know what your favorite or least favorite pages were in the comments and be sure to
like and subscribe for more semi-aesthetic content.
See ya soon.