My First Bullet Journal (or How I Made Lemonade out of Lemons)

After living in Minnesota for 20 years, I was a not excited about a snow storm over the past few days.  Bart and I had a really fun lunch planned with good friends that we had to cancel and I was crabby about that.  But I told Facebook that I was going to make lemonades out of lemons, so this blog post is to show you how I managed to do that this weekend.

I was appalled and alarmed over Christmas break when I discovered that Bullet Journaling was a thing and I had never heard of it.  I immediately ordered supplies and started to practice what I wanted to have in the journal.  When the stuff finally came on January 4th (It seemed like to took forever) I got right to work.  It didn't take me long to realize a few things:  I can't draw a straight line even with a ruler, my handwriting sucks, and I can't even color inside the lines as well as my six year old granddaughter, much less doodle cute little flowers on the side of pages.  So I headed to my reliable old Photoshop, where I CAN draw straight lines, and started to create some pages.

The first page that I created was a monthly habit tracker.  I am super excited about this concept.  Each month I'm going to track the habits that I want to incorporate into my life by putting a dot in the correct box.   This has already proven to be very motivating for me.   This is a jpeg version, but if you would like a PDF you can feel free to email me.  (Email address at the end of the post).

I then went on to create a two page-spread to track every chapter of the Bible that I read in 2017.  My goal is to complete the whole Bible in that time according to the Bishop's challenge to United Methodists in our annual conference.   I stole most of it and thus infringed several copyrights to create it so I'll avoid prosecution by not publishing that here.

I had been challenged by a coworker to memorize Philippians, so I created this tracker:

I have a bad back, so the idea of walking 500 miles is a big accomplishment.  I really liked how this turned out and basically did it from scratch.   Each toe is two miles.... and when I finish ten I get to color in the foot.  I'm hoping by the end of the year that this whole thing is done.  Here it is after I attempted to color in the lines a few days ago... followed by the printable you can download.

Since those first pages, I have been on a roll.  I have a tracker for all of the professional goals I have this year.  I created a page to track blood sugar and insulin.  I have one for writing goals this coming year, and one for a whole page for a book I'm planning to write this year.   Bart and I are doing an experiment where we don't go out to eat during the whole month of January, so I created a page to track the spending difference between the months.  

I had heard about things like a "Brain Dump" page and wanted a place to save all of my best ideas for the month so I created this page, which will look much better once it is colored.  

Finally, and this is my favorite, I decided to do a page for #finishwellFriday.  This is something I've been trying to get to go viral but it hasn't been adapted by more than a few people.  The idea is that you have a list of things that you are really dreading -- starting with no more than 3 -- and do them first thing Friday morning.  If they get done, you can do three more.  Then you post your results on Facebook and hashtag it #finishwellFriday.

I really like how this turned out and hope that others will try it.

I know I'm not like most people, but this has been incredibly motivating for me.  I'm excited about the ways that in just one week it has moved me forward to live more intentionally!

My email is maeflye at mac dot com.  Am happy to share this stuff with you!