Hey hey, it’s MJ,

Alright here’s me being honest. I am writing this post at the beginning of September because I want to keep ahead of my posting schedule and that is the only way I know how to. Write as many as I can early and then fill in with the posts that I cannot write early, like my IPSY Glam Bags, my Book of The Month, or any progressive post that I have on the blog. 

I don’t actually know when this post is going to come out. According to my calendar it’s in November, so happy November. I hope everyone’s fall is going well, I have no idea what my life will be like when this post actually comes out so roll with me. 

You can check out what else I have compared if you want to, there are a few out on the blog now, my yearly covers, book cases, and monthly covers.

I feel like I am doing a lot of comparing lately, but I like it. I like looking back and seeing how far I have come with my Bullet Journal and how far I still have to go. I know I will have more posts that will come out next year because I have several more comparisons to make when it comes to my Bullet Journal journey. 

So here we go, mood trackers. They have changed a lot over the years but for all intents and purposes we are going to compare January of the last four years. 

            I am going to say something real quick; up until this year I used the same colors every month no matter the content. This year I made the colors what would work with the theme be the colors that I used. It’s a lot better, I also started using markers instead of the fine liner pens in mid-2018.

2018: Man, I will say this over and over but 2018 was really a year where I just tried what I saw on Pinterest and ran with it. I love the hexagons, I did a honeycomb this year for August (you can check that out in Update #3). And I liked how I did it this year better. I used too many dark colors and I really learned that the dark colors were not right for my mood tracker during this month. I also was recording multiple moods a day and that was a mistake. 2018 is that BuJo that I look back on and cringe a little bit, but we all have to start somewhere and this was my starting point. 

2019: Do not ask me why January is a dreamcatcher, dreamcatchers for some reason to me are a summer thing but here I was putting it in January. I was more creative in 2019 for sure even though I missed out on the entire month of November and didn’t actually Bullet Journal much. I didn’t and that was such a problem. I liked branching out from the more simplistic mood trackers that I had done in 2018.

2020: Here’s where my Bullet Journal really hit its stride. I mean 2020 was a disaster, but I actually had time to work on my BuJo to a higher degree than in years past. My January theme last year was Studio Ghibli, so everything was themed. I love the Soot Sprites from Spirited Away. I love that movie, it’s so good and the Sprites are just so fun. Last year I really did take the time to really get into the more creative parts of my BuJo, last year was also my first themed year, and if you want to check out all the themes you can, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. 

2021: Because of the fun I had with my themes last year I decided to theme this year as well, but this year I focused on one fandom and that was Disney. January this year was Alice in Wonderland, I read the book in January too so it was all very fitting. I have always thought the caterpillar was ridiculous and I cannot tell you how many concepts I went through to get the caterpillar on the page. My original thought was to do the Mad Hatter’s table with all the tea cups and I didn’t like it once I started to draw it so it was back to the drawing board. Then I considered the bowl of cookies from the beginning of the film, I didn’t like that either so I decided to do the caterpillar and his bubbles. (We are going to call it bubbles because I don’t want to get flags for that kind of content.) You can read all about my January theme if you want to, just click the link.

So there we go, four years condensed into under 1,000 words. That is crazy to think about, my Bullet Journals have changed so much in the last four years and doing these posts is just really showing me how far I have come. It’s crazy to see where I started and where I am now. 

Alright, so until the next post I hope that everyone has an amazing few days and I will be back later in the week with another post. Until then, I hope that everyone stays happy, healthy, and safe. 

-MJ