How to Actually Bullet Journal

I am unfortunately a bitch who buys a journal. Blank ones, lined ones, square ones, rectangular ones, and (duh) dotted ones.

“Wow Brooke you must journal a lot!” Lovely thought. Wrong. I am unfortunately a serial journal purchaser. My daydreams about journaling go crazy, and I have attempted journaling about:

1. Books I’ve read

2. Books I want to write

3. Travel

4. Movies (I don’t even watch a lot of movies??)

5. My actual life (but make it sound less boring)

Trust me when I say there’s more. I, like many creatives out there (whether you assholes admit it or not), tend to get a little overly excited about a journaling concept and then immediately go purchase a shiny new journal.

This excitement is only further accelerated by Pinterest (aka the devil) (aka the love of my life). Personally, I have spent many an hour drooling over beautiful bullet journal spreads. The artful use of washi tape! The loopy calligraphy! My crow-brain looks at these images and immediately thinks: “yes. If I do not log my books in this flawless, gorgeous way, then what the hell am I reading for?”

Enter the new journal, the washi tape, the little pens….and the paralysis. Typically, I start the progress of attempting to bullet journal by sketching out everything in pencil. Then, I add pen and immediately fuck it up. I am now done with bullet journaling. I have ruined it. My life and my journaling is over. I have a tantrum that would impress the fussiest of toddlers. It’s called The Creative Process.

Except, every time I open the journal to try again, I see a dumb little ink smudge or an off center image. My mind wanders to the perfect Pinterest spreads. Sketching everything out in pencil becomes laborious and boring to me. I wonder why people do this when StoryGraph exists. Then, the book closes for good, gets shoved onto a shelf.

A few months to a year later, I’m shopping for journals again.

Okay, so now that we’ve established that I’m self aware, let’s flashback to spring. I’m about to go on a trip to Disney World (blah blah Disney adult, I know I know), and I am once again hit with the urge to start a bullet journal.

When my sister and I were looking through my dad’s house after he passed, we found my grandfather’s travel journal, which captured all the trips he took in vivid detail (although he just wrote in pen, no washi tape in sight). When I thought of him, and his battle with losing his memory near the end of his life, I became really struck with the idea of wanting to document my travels. When I pictured telling stories of places I went, I might not remember the name of the restaurants I went to, what I ordered, or the walking paths that I took. The concept of travel journaling felt like giving my future self a gift.

But I’m not the type of person to just write pages in a journal either, I wanted pictures, I wanted a little Razzle Dazzle. Once again, Pinterest spreads went through my mind. Junk journal! Calligraphy! Stickers and drawings!

I went to Disney World, and immediately discovered that I had no time for journaling if I actually wanted to enjoy the trip (if you’ve done a big Disney trip, you know). My heart sank, because (YET AGAIN) my daydreams of a Pinterest-y bullet journal were crushed.

The way that I didn’t even finish this page.

I went to Miami for a weekend and didn’t journal at all, then a trip to New Hampshire to visit my friend, and I want plagued by the same. Finally, I knew that I was going on a big trip to Maine that I was excited for, and if I wanted the journal to be chronological, I knew I needed to catch up on all my previous trips.

So y’all, I think the secret to bullet journaling is actually not giving a fuck.

For my Miami/New Hampshire spreads: the writing is uneven (I wrote it in marker because I was too lazy to get off the couch and get a pen) and the drawings are wiggly. There is no washi tape or extra fluff. When I started this book, I bought typewriter letter stamps to add to the “aesthetic”. Do you know how fucking long it takes to stamp out a full word in letter stamps?? I’m trying to actually enjoy my trip, not live in letter-stamp purgatory.

The weird thing that happened is that — even without the extras and the fluff and the hard work — I started to love my bullet journal. One of the huge turn around points for me was that I purchased a mini photo printer that spat out my iPhone pictures on sticker paper. As silly as it sounds, not having to print something out on a big printer, cut it out, and tape/glue it on the pages was a huge gamechanger.

When I went to Kennebunkport, ME this summer, I started to play with more aesthetics in the journal. These entries are the most pleasing to me, art-wise, and I really think what got me in the groove of it was realizing that the art part…didn’t actually matter.

I’m travel journaling because one day, I’m going to forget the flavor of ice cream I had while I looked at the ocean with my best friends at my side. One day, I might lose all the digital images that I’ve collected and with them will be my memories. Or, one day I’ll find a photo, and when I look at it I’ll squint and ask myself: “where was that? when did that happen?”

A frequent phrase in my household is “I need to touch grass”. I am not above being sucked into internet perfectionism and consumer culture. I am not above seeing a notebook, or a fancy pen, or (god damn stupid fucking) letter stamps and thinking that if I buy these, it will change my life. When I stress out about my travel journal’s lack of “perfection” (in the deeply, internet sense), what I need to do is go touch grass. The travel journal is for me, for me now and for me at 80 years old. It is perfect because my loved ones and what we did together are squished between it’s pages. It is perfect because when I read about the food I ate, I can taste the memory on the back of my tongue. It’s perfect because it exists, and I made it, and it’s mine.

For the first time in my life, I actually feel a continuous motivation to bullet journal. My current notebook is almost full, and it’s crazy to think that I actually need to buy another notebook, rather than just wanting one. There’s probably a longer conversation that can be had here regarding what motivates us to do things. Like, I couldn’t journal when I was trying to make my journal look “aesthetic”, “cool”, or “how a bullet journal should look”. My motivation came from thinking about old me, with her grey hair. She needs to remember that we went to a strip joint in Miami and that we spent our life’s savings trying to find the best lobster roll in Kennebunkport. At her age, she won’t even remember what the hell a “Pinterest” is.

I get giddy and kick my feet when I think about the opportunities I have to travel, and then softly do my little travel journal crafts. I’m clapping like an excited lil babe when I see my iPhone printer do it’s thing. I gasp when I see a cool sticker to fit somewhere in the pages — it doesn’t matter where, I’ll squeeze it in and make it fit.

I like to call journaling a “soft” craft because it has joined the ranks of select crafts that calm me down, unlike most of my hobbies — which make me feel like I’m on a tightrope. A tightrope that is on fire. In caring about it less, journaling has become softer to me, gentler. It doesn’t really matter, because it matters in the grand scheme of what it’s for. A gift, something soft and special…but not urgent. In my journaling journey, I’ve realized the importance these “soft” crafts have for me, and I feel strongly that having something to create without pressure is something that we could all use more of.

I don’t know if any of this advice (“advice”??) was at all helpful, but I do recommend bullet journaling, or if not that, another craft — in whatever weird loopy imperfect way that you chose to do it.