Setting up my 2nd Bullet Journal

In tenth grade I started my first ever bullet journal. It was around the end of October Break and me and my friend went to the mall to try to find some dotted notebooks we could use. For the next week we spent a while setting them up, making them look nice, trying to figure out color schemes, draw doodles that weren’t ugly, etc.

Since then it’s been almost exactly a year and I have been planning in my bullet journal for most of the time since. Besides the fact that writing things down and planning is useful for school, I’ve found the bullet journaling is the activity I can do when I want to relax and be creative. I usually put on a show or a podcast and just draw and decorate for a while. I think the fun of having a bullet journal and not just a planner is that it really is whatever you want it to be, you can make room for whatever you need to have in your planner. For example I have a books of the year page where I write in all the books I read, I’ve also made pages to brainstorm what to get people for Christmas, bucket lists, workouts, I just make pages whenever I am in the mood too. The downside to this is that you do have to make EVERYTHING which can sometimes get tedious and frustrating. Especially last year when I was trying to figure out things like, how many rows do I need for one day, how to space out a calendar, there’s a lot of counting and recounting rows and columns and then doing it wrong and having to erase stuff.

This year I was super excited to start my new journal because I feel like I have a much better grasp on what I like to have in my journal, how much space I need for each item, so there isn’t as much trial and error with format. To get started I usually just look up bullet journal ideas and look at all the photos. I knew that I wanted to start this bullet journal with something really fun and colorful even on the daily planning pages, where I usually don’t have doodles just the date. I came across this inspiration photo and wanted to replicate it,

but then I was thinking about it and I decided why not have little icons for the date instead of a banner? I started with the simple pumpkins and then I kind of just ran with it and did all kinds of Halloween themed things. This is probably the most decorated the daily pages will ever be just because it takes a lot of time to get all the details, but I’m definitely gonna enjoy it while I have it!

Learning Outcomes:

LO1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth: I identified my strengths for organization and planning and developed my drawing and formatting skills

LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences: I was able to keep at bullet journaling for an entire year and I’m starting my second despite the fact that sometimes it can get tedious, and it’s hard to be creative and keep setting up all of the spreads and pages