#2 of 52: Space, Spells, Sisters and Systems

Tags

austin kleon, bookblock.com, bullet journal, eccolo, jackie morris, leuchtturm, robert macfarlane, ryder carroll, the lost words

So I’m running out of space on this website. In fact, my dashboard tells me I have already done so. I don’t have a premium package anymore, as I downgraded my services last year when I really wasn’t sure what would happen to this blog. That means no new pictures until I can delete some old posts, which I am slowly doing. I’d like to keep the posts I actually wrote, and delete the links to books I enjoyed, or the Friday cartoons. Re-read them if you want, because some posts from June of 2012 will be disappearing soon.

I promised I would talk about notebooks this week, but before I do that I want to talk about a beautiful book my sister sent me for Christmas: The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris. This heavy and huge book is a picture book, a self-proclaimed spell book, of magical words that have vanished from the language of children. Essentially it is a collection of poems about certain words, like acorn, heather, raven, and wren, to name a few. The poems are glorious and definitely meant to be read aloud. But the real wonder of this book are the illustrations. Jackie Morris brings the natural world to life , interspersed with beautiful floating alphabets in whimsical fonts. I hadn’t heard about it at all but my sister is much more in tune with new titles and the latest publishing marvels. So it was the perfect surprise on Christmas day. It is very special, as is the sister who gave it to me. She continues to surprise and delight and support me, and I only hope I do the same for her.

Okay so let’s talk about notebooks! It’s pretty much the same system, with a planner and a journal or three. 🙂

My most used journal is the Eccolo World Traveller discussed in this post. It is almost filled up and I have loved writing in it and pasting things into it. I will probably start another one when it is filled (there are three blank ones on my shelf!)

I am also using one of my custom Bookblock Original notebooks to organize my blog posts. I jot down ideas for each week as I think of them, with my overall aim to have some sort of coherent plan for the year.

As for my planner, I have HUGE news!!! In December of 2016 you may recall I wrote a blog post about my plans for 2017, to use a Leuchtturm 1917 Jottbook as a bullet journal planner. And I used it all through 2017! And I’m still using it! I can’t believe I actually stuck with a planner for over a year. Very proud of myself. I don’t have a lot of appointments/tasks to keep track of, but it works for me. Who knew the simplest system would work the best? I still love my Filofax binders but just can’t bear to carry them around with me. My bullet journal weighs nothing and I don’t feel bad if I don’t look at it for a couple of days, because there are no wasted pages. Ryder Carroll is a brilliant man. I’ve heard he has introduced a Bullet Journal app to support the analog journal but I haven’t tried it out yet.

And here’s another piece of huge news (lowercase huge): I have added a log book to my journal system. I got the idea from Austin Kleon from his post On Keeping a Logbook. My writing is long-winded (bless you reader if you’ve made it this far!) and often I find myself running out of time for my long journal pieces. Right now I’m still trying to write a coherent journal entry about Christmas – the joys of getting together with friends and family, tempered by the power being unable to stay on – and then something amazing will happen in my day that I just have to write about (saw David Letterman’s new show for NetFlix, My Next Guest. The guest was Barack Obama and what he said about voter apathy really got my cylinders firing). In the past I would tear into a new journal or have two, three or four journals on the go. But I may have solved this with a logbook: I can at least write down a brief description of what I want to write about later. This has the obvious benefit of prompting me to remember it and empties my brain so I can focus on other things. I love Austin Kleon’s newsletter; I almost always have something to copy into my journal, or to send to David, as Austin has an eclectic taste in music. If you haven’t already done so, check him out. Oh I almost forgot – the notebook I am using as my logbook is the Colouring Notebook. Today is January 14 and I haven’t missed a day. They say it takes two weeks to form a habit so this bodes well!

Hope you all had a great week. Happy journaling.

 

My Posting Schedule and My Planner for December and Next Year

Tags

boho berry, bullet journal, leuchtturm, ryder carroll

Hi everyone hope you are all having a lovely weekend. I was hoping to resume my pre-move posting schedule, but as you have seen that has not happened. My back has been giving me trouble since the September Labour Day Weekend and this week I wrenched it mightily which did not help. I find when I am in a lot of pain my focus is very narrow; I go to work and get only the essentials done at home. My amazing husband is keeping the house running while I concentrate on chiropractic appointments (finally found one I connect with), massage therapy and light exercise. This weekend I spent the majority of Saturday in a medical clinic waiting to see a doctor about pain medication. I shall put regular blog posts as one of my New Year’s Resolutions.

Anyway, onto more fun stuff, like what planner I will be using in 2017. It seems everyone is talking about their plans so I thought I would share mine. I’ve been using my A5 Filofax Finsbury since July. I’ve had so much to keep track of during the move that I needed the big binder. But things have calmed down somewhat, most of the To Dos are checked off, and I thought this month might be the perfect time to try out a Bullet Journal.

I last wrote about Bullet Journaling in July of 2014 and I’ve been watching YouTube videos about this system ever since. I like the simplicity of it; I find the A5 Finsbury big and bulky to lug around. So this afternoon I took a couple of hours and wrote some notes in my journal about Bullet Journaling. I watched videos from BohoBerry and Ryder Carroll and decided to tackle my own.

Ryder says to commit to the system for at least two months to determine if it works for you, so I decided to start with a Leuchtturm Jottbook, something small to start off with.

The squared option is best, because with Bullet Journaling you are essentially making lists, of tasks, events and notes. This is much easier to do if the squares are already there for you.

Luckily the Leuchtturm notebooks come with a Contents page (which I am using as my Index) and the pages are numbered. Perfect for mapping out the Future Log, Monthly Log and Daily Log.

I’m starting my Bullet Journal in December 2016 so my Future Log starts with January 2017. I chose the 6 month layout. I only had to draw two straight lines – easy!

Here are some future tasks I wanted to make note of. You can see I am using the standard Bullet Journal legend: a dot for tasks, a dash for notes, and a circle for events. Well I hope you can see it; the photos didn’t seem so dark when I was editing them. Sorry about that!

Here is the Monthly Log page. I covered up some personal events. Ryder says to be super brief here, so if you have more than one thing happening on a given day you can fit it all in on the one line. And I see that I put a circle by Christmas but forgot the circle by New Years.

If you want a day or event or task to have priority Ryder suggests adding an asterisk to the left of the symbol. Be sure to leave space on the left margin for such signifiers: an asterisk denotes priority, an exclamation point denotes inspiration, and an eye denotes exploration, meaning that idea or tasks needs further research.

December is a busy month, and so far my tasks all have to do with Christmas! The task list goes on the opposite page to the Monthly Log.

And here is my Daily Log. It is suggested not to plan the days ahead; do that on your monthly log or future log. This space should be free form in that you never know how much space you might need for a particular day. And this space isn’t just for tasks; record whatever you want, from ideas to the weather. This was my To Do list for today and I only have one thing left. Notice I didn’t write down blog post! But I will now, and mark it done, using an X. To change the status of a task, X denotes complete, > denotes migrated to the next month’s log, and < denotes migrated to the future log. You wouldn’t start the migration process until the end of the month, when you likely will have your next month’s spread laid out.

Ryder has made provision for tasks and notes that are similar, which you might want to keep together. He suggests putting these in a Collection spread, in the next blank spread available. This could be tasks for a project or a shopping list. As I move through the month I will see what makes sense for me.

And that’s it for my Bullet Journal, at least for now. Boho Berry has some amazing spreads, and there are lots of Bullet Journal examples out there from which to get inspiration. People have added tracker pages for every habit imaginable, along with book, movie and tv show lists. I will revisit my Bullet Journal before the New Year to see how it’s working. Please comment below if any of you use this system, and your thoughts on it. Until next time. 🙂

The Phenomenon of Bullet Journaling

Tags

bullet journal, doug lane, livescribe, modern stationer, ryder carroll

How many of you keep a Bullet Journal? I don’t currently but the concept appeals to me. I first heard about Bullet Journaling on Youtube; can’t remember which of the many journalers I follow mentioned it. I just did a search on Youtube for “bullet journal” and it returned over 38,000 videos. And if you google the same you get over 34,000,000 hits. Quite the phenomenon.

It seems that Bullet Journaling is the brainchild of Ryder Carroll, and he has an excellent website describing his system. I’m not going to repeat it here, you can visit his website or Youtube or the millions of other blog posts about it. What I like about the system is the index, which I sometimes long for in my many journals, and the flexibility of the system, where some days you can write five pages and other days nothing at all. And it still all works.

Livescribe published an interview with Ryder Carroll in April of this year in which he discusses the system and the feedback he’s received. His system has had an especially positive effect on persons with learning disabilities and psychological disorders. At the heart, people respond to the method or they don’t; and he’s always open to people modifying his system to suit their unique needs.

At the end of the day, the big thing about the Bullet Journal is that it’s a series of methods so if a method doesn’t work for people, then I always advise not to use them. If they do work for them, great. And if there’s something they need the book to do, that it doesn’t, then they should go ahead and invent it. – Ryder Carroll

Doug Lane at Modern Stationer wrote a great article on how he learned to love paper again through this system.

…I find sitting down with my pen and notebook very relaxing. When I combine it with some music and perhaps even a Guinness, it is even better. It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like me getting my shit together. – Doug Lane

I would love to hear from you how you use this system, if you do, or if, like me, you would like to and are thinking about starting yet another journal to organize thoughts and dreams and tasks. Whatever system you use, have fun journaling the night away.