Upping my Bujo Game

One of the odd things, for me, about this quarantine has been that I don’t actually have all that much more time on my hands. Before this started I was already spending most of my days at home working (or trying to work) on my dissertation. Things had started to pick up right before everything closed, I had just started a part-time internship and the weather was making it easier to take trips into the city, but I’d spent the last few months living a pretty simple life.

Now that I can’t go on adventures or see people at all, however, I am finding that the days blend together a bit more than I’m comfortable with. So, I decided it was time to up my bullet journal game. Now, I’ve been doing some version of bullet journaling on and off for a long time now, but I wasn’t very consistent. Not in style and not in effort. I’d managed to work out daily, weekly, and monthly layouts that worked for me, and I had a pretty good handle on how to make collections work for me. But I always felt like there was something missing.

That something was color and fun. So, I decided to start out this month with an upgraded layout, just to see how I liked it.

I worked this layout in the journal I’ve been using since January, an Archer and Olive Cresent Moon Dot Grid Notebook with Gilded Edges. I chose this one late last year because the moon cover and gilded edges totally spoke to my inner child, who just wants a book to write down all of her magic spells.

The cover page has a large watercolor drawing of magnolia flowers. I chose magnolias because they always make me think of early spring. We had a magnolia in the front yard growing up and it was alway one of the first things to start blooming. It’s not the most amazing painting ever, but I had fun making it.

The journal held up very well to the watercolors. I know that markers would have been easier but I realized a while back that I didn’t like working with them. I always felt limited by the colors I had on hand. With watercolors I can make whatever color I want. Like, I wanted a very warm grey for the branches and I was able to get just the shade I wanted by mixing a brown with blue.

I took the pink I’d mixed up for the magnolia blossom and used it throughout the rest of the monthly spread. I used it to help break up spreads so that they were easier to read and also just because, well, I like pink.

This month, in addition to the calendar page, I’ve got a spending log, a goals page, a braindump section, and a special page for my blog work. I’ve committed to taking this thing more seriously this month, and so I thought it would be a good idea to make a place for that.

The last page is a weekly spread to use next week. I’ve been doing Alastair Method style weeklies for a while and found they work well for me. I like having my to-do list and appointments combined into one. Plus, there are often days when I don’t have any scheduled tasks, so it’s nice not to waste the space.

I’ll check in at the end of the month to let you all know how it’s going!