The beginning of April for me is the beginning of my third bullet journal (bujo). I have come to savour the days when I am finishing up a journal and on the verge of starting a new one. I plan in advance yet for some reason, I am not able to start working on the next one till it is going to be in use. I wrote the story of the first one here:
and today, it is time for the second one as I archive it away.
What I loved about this journal
I did a lot of preplanning for this journal. The end of 2017 brought with it many online courses on setting up the new year and though I did not complete all of them, I got a fairly good idea on how I wanted my next year to be organized. I saw this beautiful hack to line the pages with different washi tape to represent different months. I loved the effect this had and am using it now for the third one as well:
This journal was my place for brainstorming and storing ideas for projects for my classes (though that might have a lot to do with me wanting to keep it only for January-March, a full quarter). Apart from my usual assignment and exam planners and trackers, I took notes in it from seminar sessions I attended, recorded ideas for writing on my blog, and spent many a pages taking notes for final assignments. Though I could have done this somewhere else, I take my bujo with me everywhere — it has all my deadlines and milestones and I refer to it constantly. Thus, it made sense for me to have my ideas accessible in the same place as my milestones.
I recorded a memory for everyday and also had a guiding quote for the month. I love spreads like this one particularly because it shows the milestones and moments that I achieved as well as new ones that happened.
Somedays I had to try hard to find my highlight of the day. Some days, the highlight was the whole day and how productive it had been. Looking back and being able to gauge the whole month in two pages is quite amazing.
Spreads that taught me something
My reading track was undoubtably the most challenging spread in this bujo. The idea behind it was that by reaching my minimum target of 30 pages and 60 days for the day, I would be able to finish all the books on the shelves. The 30/60 calculation had been based on the number of pages and the amount of time I can spend on reading.
I made the mistake of not considering readings for my classes. 🙂 One of my courses required me to analyze three papers a week (one each for Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and I spent a lot of time doing that instead of the books I had decided. Hence, my final check marks are based on the pages I read and not exactly on the books on the tracker. My reading style also changed with the books I was reading. The novels on this tracker were for a comparative literature course for which we wrote response papers and had discussions on bigger themes. Thus, note taking often accompanied reading. For the top shelf, the teaching-related books, I was note-taking for a different reason — to make connections with the content, jot down ideas for future teaching, etc. Thus, all in all, I did a lot of reading, just more than I had hoped for. 😉
For April-June, I have many changes to the reading tracker: I want to focus on reading for leisure and there is no minimum number of pages to read per day. I added new books to my original set up in January and as a result, I have left space this time to decide books later.
The vision of the month at the beginning and the Review of the month at the end of each month were quite helpful. Though I did not refer to my vision constantly, sometime around the middle of the month while I would be flipping through my bujo, I would find it and reread what I considered metrics for success. I would dedicate some of my time in the remaining month to try my best to meet those goals. I learned how to ensure that I stay committed to my aims for the month. At the end of the month, the review was helpful to not my accomplishments, challenging times, things I am most proud of, how I am different, personal struggles and big events. These are taken from the month review template by Sublime Reflection. This helped me get a holistic view of how the month went.
Spreads that I will revisit
In all this time, I have not had to visit my first bujo. However, because this one has yearly spreads, I am sure I will visiting it more and updating them as things progress. It is not efficient in my mind to keep referring back to my previous journal, so I have decided to create spreads in my new one that will help me fill the previous time when I have time.
- Books bought and read in 2018
I had two separate spreads to keep track of the books bought and read in 2018. I still want to complete them. However, I do not want to open my second bujo every time I buy something or finish reading a book. I will keep track of this list in this third one and add the names later to complete my 2018 spread. R is for read and B is for bought.
Hopes for this one
I love the idea of quarterly bujos. Without classes, this new one would be filled at a slower pace, I believe. But it is the just the beginning of its journey and mine in it, so I should not worry about filling it up and moving on it number 4. 🙂 Hence, something I want to practice in this one is to be patient and let it fill itself up without my constant counting of the number of pages to fill, number of pages that will be available for the next quarter if I want to fit that in there too and so on.
Conclusion
My word for the year is proactive. Aligned with my goals for the year, and with the help of my bujo, I spent time on many things I had never imagined spending time on. I started volunteering at a high school, I wanted to build a practice of writing consistently on A Teacher’s Hat, I started to engage with fellow peers and teachers on Twitter. When I started this year, many of these things were not on the list. Yet, they happened and are now an integral part of my day and week. Scheduling time in advance for these activities in my journal has helped me be focused and give my best in all my projects, whether school related or personal. At the end of everyday, I take some time to write a short paragraph — a reflection, something to get off my mind or something to remember for later. This journal is the epitome of consistency for me because every month looks the same in set up. I have finally found a system that works.
As I close that bujo and put it away in a safe place where it will not catch dust, I think about the three months I recorded in it and the the one week in December that I spent planning it out. There were times when I was stressed about finishing it up in the proper way: every page meaningful and written into and it all worked out in the end.
As always, a reminder to self and everyone who has a bullet journal, each one is a continuation of your journey. That is why I titled this post ‘The Third Part’, this third bujo will represent the next part of my life. In any bujo, there is no right or wrong spread; there is no right or wrong thing you can put in it. I is everything you want it to be , exactly how you want it to be.
May the next one be a place for more growth! 🙂
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