Two weeks ago, I got a message from a friend of mine raving about creating her first bullet journal, and of course like most of you I replied with a question of, “what is a bullet journal?” After watching countless YouTube videos, reading so many articles on Reddit, and listening to podcasts about how Bullet Journaling have saved people's lives (pretty dramatic, right?) it finally prompted me to get started on my own. But let’s keep in mind that I just bought a planner last week, so I was praying to whatever god you believe in that this Bullet Journal was ten times better (and way worth the twenty bucks I spent on it.)

The grid lined and beige moleskin notebook came in the mail two days after the order (heck yeah, amazon prime.) Along with a trip to Target to get some accessories to add onto/into my new Bullet Journal. After about fifty bucks deep, I was pushing myself pretty hard to like it rather than organically liking it.

So, initially sitting down and creating my yearly, monthly and weekly calendar for my Bullet Journal was a bit more tedious to me than exciting since I wasn’t used to creating a creative way to organize my time. But, I admit looking up all the various ideas/layouts made me so inspired to try them out, and kept my motivation at such a high level. I’m not the neatest person so my Bullet Journal had smudges all over, which caused me to get annoyed pretty quickly. Although the whole point of having a Bullet Journal is to accept your faults and work with them, my perfectionist personality just wasn’t sitting right with that answer. After decorating it to my liking, I was so impressed with how cute and decorative I made it that I forgot all about the time I spent complaining.

As the week passed by I found the weekly calendar to be a bit more difficult to work with rather than a 12 or 17 month written out planner, just because I could only plan out for the next week without spending more time creating layouts. I would jumble up plans because they weren’t written down next to dates anymore but rather just written randomly in the Bullet Journal so I didn’t disrupt the decoration. The Bullet Journal had me more concerned with the aesthetic of the weekly planners rather than the organization that it was supposed to bring me; I became so wrapped up in being creative that I forgot the practical side of this journal.

I started to stray away from the planner side of the Bullet Journal and stick to only tracking my daily habits, things I needed to get done, and anything that I just wanted to see progress or digress once I started tracking it. I enjoyed this side of the bullet journal a lot more because it honestly just consisted of checking off boxes and keeping yourself accountable for both good and bad habits.

Overall the Bullet Journal was a bit harder than I expected (even though I did put on a more artistic pressure behind it) and I decided to plan all my weekly, monthly, and yearly activities in a different planner and stick to my trackers in the bullet journal.