Tag: journal

MJ’s 2022 Bullet Journal Update #2

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            When I said that I wanted to live in a fantasy world I didn’t mean a dystopian one. That’s where I am going to leave that, right here at the top and let people decipher my meaning. 

            I’ve been struggling with doing my Bullet Journal this year, I think that the theme is what is making it challenging. I love Marvel, it’s my favorite, but it’s hard to theme everything to one character per month for me. Some people probably do it super well, I am clearly not one of them. I have my theme for 2023 already, but not 2024 I might go back to simple theming in 2024. I don’t know yet though, I am not there. 

            Alright so April, May, and June. I am still working on July; it’s just getting it colored because I have to do that. I am trying, but I am struggling. I haven’t started August yet and I might change the theming for August, I don’t really know yet. I am not feeling the theme that I had planned originally because I am not sure how I could make it work. So I might completely overhaul August. 

April: Deadpool

Cover: Who doesn’t love Deadpool? I went simple, I feel like I am going simpler on my covers this year and that’s totally okay with me. I went all out last year and the year before and it was so much. I loved doing my really complex covers, but this year I just haven’t had the time or the want to really go all out with them. I am working on it, I am looking and saying “what can I do for this character that represents something that I can do to the ability of my artistic prowess?” 

Mood Tracker: Unicorns, because of course. I love stained glass and I have been really using that this year because it is something that I can do. It’s Deadpool though and a unicorn stained glass window makes sense. It makes so much sense. April was a rough month for me at the end so there are some days that were not great for me. I had some betrayal in my life in late April so it was a rough go there for a while. 

Last Page: You want to know where I stopped enjoying doing my Bullet Journal this year? Here, you can tell by this page, I loved the idea, but I never really finished it. 

May: Iron Man

Cover: Iron Man is my favorite Marvel character, there is no lie there, he’s a lot. I loved Dum-E because that’s one of the funniest things in the film franchise. It took me a lot longer than I would like to admit to do this cover because it took me weeks to actually finish. It was fun to do though and I like the robot. 

Mood Tracker: This scene in this film broke me, it broke me. I went with the snap and shards like the world was breaking apart, I had fun with this page. I really did, but I think this was the last page that I have actually had a lot of fun with. Sometimes life hits you and doesn’t let up, so here we are.

Last Page: Proof that Tony Stark has a heart, it was a fun thing from the movies that went from the first Iron Man to the close of the Infinity Saga. It got very sad, but again, here we are. I didn’t finish the background on this page either, but that’s where I am in life at the moment, it got done it was a lot of coloring and sketching so I just let it as is.

June: Spiderman

Cover: Ignore Spiderman in the center, I can’t draw people. We know this, we have known this for years. I wanted the cityscape and the webs so I rolled with it. It was a lot of coloring and stuff and it’s like my June cover last year a lot of lines. So many lines. 

Mood Tracker: It’s a spider web, because duh, what else would I do for Spiderman? I regret some of my color choices because they are so close together, but other than that, it’s fine. 

Last Page: I loved that scene in Civil War so I had to put it in where Spidey steals Cap’s shield, it’s a great scene and I wanted it in my Bullet Journal. My July theme is Captain America so you are going to be seeing a lot of the shield in the next post. 

            Well, that’s it for this one. I am hoping to find my joy again with my Bullet Journal because it’s a fun and such an important thing in my life. I enjoy working on it and I know that it helps me keep my life organized, but right now things are just so sucky and I hate it. If you want to check out the first three months of the year that is a thing that you can do because by now y’all know I love to link past posts.

            I will be back later in the week with another post, so until then…I want to say stay safe, happy, and healthy, but we all know that there are people working against that. So for now I want everyone just to stay safe out there. 

            -MJ 

MJ’s 2022 Book Bullet Journal Update#2: March and April

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            Well, I am all the way on book 43, it’s insane. I hadn’t even read 43 by August last year. I also bought like a billion books in April because I hit the big sad for a few weeks. Let’s just say that having feelings are dumb and no one should have to deal with them. 

            In March I read like nine books and in April I read ten, two were Accelerated Reader books for school so I didn’t count them in my Bullet Journal, well at least not in all the places I count the other books I am reading that I own and have on my TBR.

            It’s really soggy outside today as I am writing this and it’s also state testing week and that means that we are all busy all the time. 

            So, this pretty much like January and February, just with new months, I know that’s such a revolutionary idea, but that’s about where I am today. Believe me, as I am sitting here my brain is trying to conceptualize a writing journal, which seems like too many journals. Way too many journals, because I have for sure already started my 2023 Book Bullet Journal, I had the time and wanted to avoid other things so here we are. 

            March, I for sure had some days where I didn’t read because we were on vacation for Spring Break and trying to read 100 pages a day in that situation is difficult, I want to read 100 pages minimum every day; some days are much more successful than others. There are also some days where I read a whole book, so here we are. 

            I considered making BookTok content, but that’s still something that scares me, that’s 100% not what this post is about though! 

March: 

Cover: I love lavender, and the quote is from The Love Hypothesis so it’s a super cute cover that I really enjoyed. Several of my covers this year are more nature themed and I probably will continue that into next year. Again, I went for simple, and it will remain that way.

Books Read: Shorter list than February because I took some time off this month reading, I was on vacation, it was a lot of driving, we went through seven states to and back in something like nine days. It was insane and did effect how many books I read.

Thoughts and Insights: This is very similar to how I write my book blog posts to be honest, it’s quick takes though, small little bullet points that say whether or not I actually enjoyed the books I was reading or not. Some of them were weird this month. Just my comments, because I don’t censor in my Book BuJo, A Court of Mist and Fury was amazing but it broke me. 

Stats: I love a good condensed statistics page and man do I love tracking stuff! It really does put into perspective though how much I read per month. 

Recap: I chose new colors and I like these ones better, so I will be sticking with them the rest of the year, provided that my markers hold out. I read more paper back than hard cover, I rated lots of books in the 4-star range, and I read like a lot of fantasy. 

Monthly Book Stack: Still going for the larger books, I accidently put the wrong name, I got a little ahead of myself when it came to the second book in the ACOTAR series because I’m dumb. 

The page between March and April is a book playlist, I have one song and that’s it. I need more but I wrote that one in here last December when I was reading Kingdom of The Wicked and Kingdom of the Cursed (I have preordered the third one because I have a problem!) 

April: 

Cover: Birthday month and I went with bubbles; I think that this one could have been executed better but the A Court of Mist and Fury quote was amazing and I needed it in here. 

Books Read: 10 this month including one for Battle of the Books at school. It takes ten books to fill up one column, at least this month. That is my one problem with this journal and why I switched to an Artist’s Loft for next year, the dots on this one change from month to month so spacing is weird. 

Thoughts: I had a lot of thoughts about the books I read this month, including two where I thought that they were going to get thrown across my office, I had a fear of a trope that is for sure a giant ick in my life. I was glad that I was wrong both times. 

Monthly Stats: I bought a lot of books, don’t judge me. I also didn’t read a 5-star book this month and that’s the first time that’s happened this year. I like having five-star books, but here we are with just an okay reading month. 

Recap: Likes of 4-star reads, a few 3-star reads (you can see my rating system if you want to, I did a whole post about it because of TikTok earlier in the year.) I read more hardcover than paperback, which for me is a little odd, but here we are. 

Book Stack: I want to see these stacks hit the top of the page, this one got closer than last month. I really should color them in, but maybe that’s something that I do next year. I don’t know, I don’t want to have it be too complicated.

The page between April and May is my Best Book of the Year Bracket, next year it’s two pages because I needed that in my life, the formatting on this one for me is a little weird, I am enjoying filling it in though. 

            Well, there you have it, my March and April Book Bullet Journal update. I like writing about my Bullet Journals, it’s fun for me even if it doesn’t matter to anyone else. 

            I will be back later in the week with another post, but until then I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy. 

            -MJ

MJ’s 2022 Bullet Journal Update #1

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            I am prewriting a bunch of posts because we are having AMI days at school and I have the time while working online with my kiddos. While we are getting a thunderstorm with freezing rain, it is unpleasant. 

            My Bullet Journal this year is Marvel themed, I like the theming every year, it’s kind of fun. I already have next year’s themes picked out and I won’t be revealing that until the end of the year. 

            So, we are just going to get right into it and go over January through March. I could do every two months but I think that’s a bit excessive. I am a lot as a human and even I think that’s excessive. 

            Let’s roll right into it because I am running on two cups of coffee and spite, that’s just my baseline, but here we are. 

January: Avengers

Cover: They are supposed to be stickers, I somehow ended up on sticker small business TikTok late last year and I loved the idea of stickers, I tried. If I would ever actually make stickers, this would probably be the content. Each sticker has a quote on it and yes, I did pick a lot of Avengers, all of the movies were fair game because it’s more MCU than the comics.

Mood Tracker: It’s the A, a very iconic symbol of the Avengers and I mean it was fun. I did it more like a piece of stained glass with the original six Avengers colors because I have a problem. I mean, I have lots of problems and wanting fun and cute things in my Bullet Journal’s is one of them. 

Last Page: It’s villain quotes, I took the major villains from all three of the Avengers movies. (I am lumping Infinity War and Endgame together because Thanos.) I picked their symbols or something to represent each of them and then found a quote that made sense for that character. I am not the best artist, we all know this, it has never been a secret that I really like art I am just not that great at it. I did mess up on the stone order on the Infinity Gauntlet, but it’s fine. It’s artistic representation, I don’t know, I made a mistake, it happens. 

February: Guardians of the Galaxy

Cover: The music in the movie is such a large part of the theming and the radio on the ship is iconic, I grew up with cassette tapes, well the end of them before we got CD’s (I am a child of the 90’s, it happens) and so I remember cassettes. This was fun to draw with all of the very regimented lines and details. I did simplify it slightly because otherwise it never would have gotten done. 

Mood tracker: Well, about that. It was fun and a little gross because it was inspired by one line from the movie and if you know it, you know it. I wanted something simple and this was fun to do. I like organic shapes, after doing such a regimented lined piece for the cover this one was the opposite of that. I picked fun colors and that is all I plan on saying about it. 

Last Page: Again, the music in these movies is so important to the storyline in so many ways. I chose to recreate the soundtrack from the first movie specifically on the tape as if it got unwound, if you were not alive during the cassette era you do not know how annoying it was to have the tape unspool and you would have to fix it. It was very annoying and happened more frequently than anyone liked to admit and I was a little kid during those days, I almost ruined like all of my tapes. 

March: WandaVision

Cover: I had a number of ideas for this page, seriously like four or five and then I went with something a little simpler. The town sign was fun to do especially with the bars around it like you were going through the shimmer or whatever it was that Wanda put up to keep the town how she wanted it. The other page is a spoiler and sorry if you haven’t watched it yet. It got spoiled for me too. 

Mood Tracker: I went with a TV show theme for this one because that’s kind of the theme of the show, shows through the eras of television. I went with an old school set and the color bars. I had to improvise on it a little bit because there are so many days in March and I didn’t plan it as well as I should have and could have. Again, we are going for fun not 100% accuracy.

Last Page: Seeing this in the last episode or whenever it was broke me a little bit. It was just so sad and the reason that Wanda did what she did. She lost literally like everything and this hurt. I went with basically just a line drawing in black and white and then put in the heart because I wanted it simple, it didn’t need to be fancy and complicated, it just needed to be. 

            This year is a little simpler than last year and there is no shame in that, I don’t have the same amount of time to work on it that I did last year and that means that while I really like the ideas, I am having I don’t have hours and hours to spend on it like I did last year. Times have changed. 

            I have a lot planned for this bullet journal throughout the rest of the year so I cannot wait to show everyone that stuff. 

            I will see everyone sooner rather than later with another post and until then I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy. 

            -MJ

2021 Fave Bullet Journal Pages

.Reading time 13 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            I do this post every year, seriously every year to give and overview of my favorite Bullet Journal Pages from the last year. This year was all one theme which is crazy, I already have 2022 started and 2023’s themes and things are planned! That’s right I am super ahead, I already even bought the journals for 2023 and 2024 because they were on sale over Black Friday. 

            If you want to see all of my Bullet Journal stuff from this year, you totally can. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. I know I link a lot of content around here but when you have series that you do you kind of have to. 

            This post will have more pages than ones in the past, I know that for sure because last year I really worked at it and this year I hope to do the same. If you want to check out my past fave pages, you totally can, 2018, 2019, and 2020. I am not going to link the comparison posts, if you want to check those out click on Part 4 for my 2021 Bullet Journal above, they are all linked there. 

            So, let’s dive right in. 2021’s theme was Disney, so it’s all Disney. 

Yearly Cover

            This one was inspired by my October cover from 2020, I wanted something a little stained glass this year because that would be super cool as stained glass, super difficult though super cool. 

Book Case (which I had to keep adding to)

            It started out with like 42 books on it, see the first photo and the second is at the end of the year when I read like 77 books, I blew my goal out of the water this year and I read a lot. I would never actually stack books like this but I ran out of room so someday soon my book case (if I do plan on reading a bunch) may have to expand onto a second page. 

February Cover

            Beauty and The Beast is one of my favorite movies and I tried really hard with this one, I really did, it took me hours to complete. I am not the best artist, but here I am trying anyway. 

March Cover

            Tangled is another one of my favorite Disney princess movies, and while I don’t like the people and should have left them out, the rest of the cover to me is amazing. My Bullet Journals are always a work in the creative and artistic process so here we are. 

April Cover

            Lilo and Stitch will always hold a very special place in my heart because I have been to Hawai’i, my godfather was from the islands and I have always held such a respect and reverence for them because of him. He took me to see this movie and we lost him in late 2019 so because April is my birthday month, I had to make it Lilo and Stitch. 

April Mood

            I loved what I did with the leaves on the lei, this one is probably top three for the year. I loved doing this page and if I did it again, I would do 30 individual plumeria flowers, either way, it was still fun. 

May Last Page

            I lost my grandmother a couple of months before Moana came out and I cried watching it the first time. I love the idea of rising the island a little higher with each chief and Moana putting a shell on it because they were going to go back to voyaging was an amazing homage to the beginning of the film. 

June Cover

            It was very nautical themed there for a while, I love The Little Mermaid, and doing this cover took I swear two days because it was a lot to work on, I do not regret it one single bit though.

June Last Page

            I love the grotto scene in the film and I did my best! It’s fun to play around with stuff and make it your own while still being true to the source material. 

September Cover

            I loved Big Hero Six it did not get the recognition that it deserved. Baymax is amazing and I want one. This movie had the diversity that you don’t see in a lot of movies and it was so fun.

October Mood 

            I just published a post about this one! I wanted a pumpkin patch and that was the only way I could think of doing it. It was a fun one to work out as I went through it. 

October Last Page

            Love Zero, he’s great and I love the idea of a ghost dog, man’s best friend is really man’s best friend eternally. 

November Cover

            Princess and The Frog is an amazing movie and this scene is one that I could watch over and over again without any problem. I tried to do it justice, I don’t really think that I did, but that’s okay. 

November Mood 

            Probably my favorite one of the year, it is top three since there are only three on this list. I was contemplating not doing extra beads but the page was just too empty without it so of course I had to add more to make it feel more real. 

            The last two on this list were late additions, at the end of my Bullet Journal each year I usually have a few pages to play around with. This year I had a Vine quotes page, an inspirational quotes page, my six months of Book of The Month, and the following two. Many of those pages have already been migrated over to my 2022 journal because I need to track things in multiple places. 

Writing Review Page

            Pinterest inspired the reading review page and that inspired the writing wrap up page because I write a lot, I like tracking my writing and seeing exactly what I am doing. I track it in like three places if not four. This is a snapshot tracker, it’s literally just words per month, number of 5,000+ word days, drafts finished, and new projects started. It’s simple and it’s what I need to see where I am when it comes to my word counts. 

Reading Tracker 

            Thank you Pinterest, before the end of the year it was covered in sticky notes because I was tracking things without putting them in the journal itself. It makes more sense for me that way. You can also tell that I went well over my original goal because the last full row of the month by month was added as well as the boxes down the side. This tracks a lot more things than my writing tracker, because again, this is a snapshot. I am doing a whole Book Bullet Journal this year but I will still have the snapshot in my regular Bullet Journal.

            Well, there it is, my favorite pages from my 2021 Bullet Journal, it’s crazy that I literally used all the pages because when I first started I had almost 100 pages left over. I have hit a point with this journal journey that I understand what I want and need in it and it’s working for me. What works for me my not work for you if you are getting into the Bullet Journal journey, find your own style and let your creativity flow. It’s supposed to be fun so have fun with it. 

            I will be back later in the week with another post so until then, I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy. 

            -MJ 

MJ’s 2021 Bullet Journal Final Update

.Reading time 12 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            I cannot believe we are here at the end of the year. (I am writing this in mid-October because I am trying to prep posts that I can when I am feeling the blog post energy so here we are.) I am hoping that as we close out the year that the rest of it has been great, or at least as good as it can be. 

            I finished my 2021 Bullet Journal in June, there is no lie there, it was done in June because I try and get as much as I can done over school breaks because I don’t want to do it after work. I really don’t. If my math and my calendar is right, today is the day after Christmas, happy day after Christmas. If it’s not, keep in mind I am writing this post two months in advance. 

            My 2021 BuJo was another experimental year, though I think that all of my BuJo’s are experimental at least with theming and style. I got my base pages down pat last year and my 2022 BuJo will be roughly the same because the style I am using now makes sense to my energy and I am so happy I finally found that. 

            If you want to check out the rest of my BuJo updates from this year you totally can. I have done three other parts so you can just click on the part number and it should take you right to it, part 1, part 2, and part 3. 

            This year’s theme was Disney and all of these are fun ones, October was Nightmare before Christmas, November was The Princess and The Frog, and December was Muppets Christmas Carol because why not? 

            Next year is Marvel and I hope by this time I have figured out how I am going to do that and hopefully have at least January and February finished. (When this post comes out I will be just getting done dogsitting for my parents neighbors so I will have a lot of time on my hands.) 

            Alright, into the actual content of this post, the last three months of 2021 even though at this moment I am still in month one of this post. 

October: Nightmare Before Christmas

Cover: I was torn between a few ideas on what to do for this one and there are not all that many great pictures of the tree doors to the other holiday lands in the movie. I found some pictures and did my best trying to make them look good. I loved the holiday doors in the film because I kind of want to see what’s behind each one. We only see Halloween and Christmas so I would love to see what’s behind the rest of the doors in the forest. 

Mood Tracker: I have drawn Jack on top of the hill before, it was a painting which was gift for my best friend so doing it again was a lot of fun. I wanted my mood tracker to be a pumpkin patch and this was the easiest way to do it even though the hill is in the cemetery, imagine that this is the other side. I don’t know? This was the only idea that came to my brain for this one, so I ran with it. (As I am writing this my downstairs neighbor is knocking on his bedroom window, which he does every morning to let his partner know that he’s home. It’s annoying and I deal with it every morning.)

Last Page: I love Zero, he’s my favorite character from the entire movie and I have an ornament with him and his grave so this was my natural choice for the last day of the month. He’s so fun and adorable and I couldn’t have a Nightmare Before Christmas themed month without him. 

November: The Princess and The Frog

Cover: One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the lily pad dance scene and I wanted to recreate it as best I could here. It was not easy; this cover easily took me three hours to finish because of all the detail and it doesn’t even feel like I used all that much detail. The other side is Ray and Louis because they are a really great comedy duo and I wanted them together on their own page and that still goes with the rest of the theme. 

Mood Tracker: I have no idea if the street signs looked like this in the movie, I honestly didn’t even look, I tried to recreate them like I saw them when I was in New Orleans in 2017 for a wedding. I love mardi gras, my high school grad party theme was mardi gras so here we are a little over a decade later and I have beads in my bullet journal. I wanted to have some beads that were already colorful and I know a lot of strands are one color, I did this because it benefits my theming. It was a lot of fun to do this one and is probably one of my favorite mood trackers of the year. 

Last Page: Dr. Facilier is a great villain, greed and crazy are a terrible combination. I love the scene where he gets taken to the other side and I would love to see the cemeteries in New Orleans, we didn’t leave Bourbon St. which is fine but I wanted to see more of the history of the city, not the bars and gift shops. Another time. I wanted to have the spirits from the other side in this as well because it just seemed fitting. 

December: Muppets Christmas Carol

Cover: This one was difficult, I tried my best, but I don’t think that this is my best work, and that is totally okay. I tried and that’s all that matters. I wanted to feature the ghosts because they are such a big part of the story. Also, everyone should know by now that I am not great at drawing people and that extends to Muppets as well. 

Mood Tracker: This one is just more Christmas themed than Muppets themed. I wanted a wreath and I was going to do one a few years ago and didn’t so here is a wreath because it seemed like it would fit with the theme and would be cute. It was. 

Last Page: I love the bunny even though he’s in the movie for about four seconds singing, he’s still my favorite but he looks kind of terrifying here because there were not a lot of perspective shots of him that I could find online. I also didn’t put a quote on the page until…well I haven’t done it yet. It will get done this weekend because I think that a quote would help make this page not look so strange. At the moment, to me, it looks really strange. (Spoiler alert: I never got around to it, oops, my bad.)

So, there we have it, another year of Bullet Journaling finished and that’s super weird and super exciting. You can check out all my comparison posts, yearly covers, monthly covers, book cases, mood trackers, and habit trackers. (One of those might be out of order, it’s fine.) In the new year I will reveal my favorite pages from the year so look forward to that. Because there were for sure pages that I didn’t show anyone this year and I plan on revealing at least a few of them for my fave pages of 2021. 

            I hope everyone is having a great holiday season and is ready for the new year in just a few days. Until we see each other in the new year I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy! 

            -MJ

2022 Book Bullet Journal Intro

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ, 

            So TikTok made me want to do this and here we are. I made a Book Bullet Journal so here we are with another Bullet Journal to add to my list of things to update daily. I just need something else to work on, right? Well, here we are and I am doing a book Bullet Journal. Thanks, TikTok, I don’t even remember the username of the person who inspired it and I feel bad about that, I have seen it from a bunch of people though and everyone does it different, so I am rolling with what works for me. Like my regular bullet journal what works for me might not work for you and also this is my first year doing it, next year this format may not work for me either.

            I am just going to go over the front pages and then my overview of January, I’ll do recaps next year so we are going to roll with it. I went with really simple theming this year because I don’t have the time to do two overly complicated themes. I also don’t have the time to do a lot of work so here we are and I am mostly done with 2022 and I will learn things throughout just like I did with my Bullet Journal. 

            So, pages, let’s talk about those. 

Genre Breakdown: It’s a list for all the genres I plan on reading this upcoming year. I already have most of my books pulled for this so that’s exciting. I just wanted to have a full list of what I was going to be reading in each category. 

The Game Plan (the books I am actually reading): I have this in sections, fiction I have all of the books on my To Be Read list listed in each of their sub-genres. Then non-fiction, which I am not planning on reading many because non-fiction is not my scene. Free choice is of course a large portion of my list this year, like it always is. I have a lot of the books filled out here, but not all because I am not really sure about the other few that I will want to read next year. Final category is my Book of the Month books and I am excited to fill these out next year. 

Ratings and Genre: My plan is to read 50 books next year; I will probably read more which is always fun. This will only be the fifty books on my TBR, I will probably have another page later in the journal for all of my extras that I end up reading when and if I finish my TBR. 

Reading trackers: I messed up on the first one so day 31 is on the top above the rest because I am an idiot. It’s just did I read and then how many pages I read. It’s just a good way to keep track of how many pages I read in a day since some days I read 10 pages and some days I read well over 100. There are also days when I read an entire book and I feel like I need a color for that too. (An idea for 2023, right?)

Stats and Stack: Yearly stats, there will be monthly stats as well in each month which will be a lot of fun. The second is my book stack, I do one every year and I will have one every month as well which will be a lot of fun with that too because I want to have the same information in multiple places because that it how my brain works, lists on lists on lists. 

Top 10 of 2021 and 2022 5 Star Books: I mean, I love a good top ten and I have read some really good books this year (you can check all of those posts out if you want to, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5, part 6 will be out later this month and if I remember I will update the link here so you can check it out) so I will have a place to record those. 2022 five stars, it’s pretty self-explanatory, I’m going to record my 5-star books. 

Get the Picture: Tiny book covers, I just want to have a few pages of fun little book covers. I have so many book covers to print for all of the pages I need them for. 

            I was going to show my monthly pages for at least January but I am thinking that I will leave those as a surprise for when I get around to writing the updates as the months go on, because why not. I really enjoyed making this journal and I am hoping that this year teaches me new things as I move into doing this again in 2023. 

            Well, I will be back later in the week with another post, so until then I hope everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy! 

            -MJ

Bullet Journal Comparison #5: Habit Trackers

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            Last comparison post of the year, now in all honesty I am writing this post in October so it’s going to be some time before this actually gets posted. I have been enjoying doing these comparison posts or evolution posts. I feel like I end up talking about how different 2018 is from 2021 and guess what; that’s okay. We all grow and change in our creative processes and here we are. 

            So this post is comparing my habit trackers, I for sure have changed my habit trackers over the years and so now instead of one page it’s two pages every month and I like tracking things. It’s also just me looking at my month and going “wow, I have not done that a lot or at all this month and that’s kind of a problem.” Well, here we are. 

            With a habit tracker I have seen people track multitudes of different things, I may track things different than others and that’s totally okay. 

2018: From the beginning to the end of 2018, I for sure added a bunch of different things to my habit tracker I started out tracking seven things and by December I was tracking 10 things. I still track most if not all of those things today, I have just added like a lot more since then. There is a lot that has changed since my original Bullet Journal and I look back at the lessons 2018 taught me, but I am glad to be moved on from it now in 2021.

2019: This was the first year that I did two different habit trackers. I am doing September of every year because why not. 2019 I clearly just stopped tracking things in September, that was my problem in my first few. I didn’t do it with the same consistency that I do now. I tracked a total of 21 things in 2019. I still track more now. This was another learning year because I did have two trackers. 

2020: 2020 was difficult, I mean we all know that. September of 2020 was rough for me, pretty much because I was sick for part of it. In 2020 I tracked 22 things instead of 21, so I didn’t add too many things but in 2020 I tracked how many days a month I did things. (I didn’t really care about that but I put it in again this year and have not filled any of them out.) 

‘2021: Here we are in the current year, in my current Bullet Journal I am still tracking 22 things. This year though, I put the days of the week below the numbers because I saw that on Pinterest and I loved that idea so I rolled with it. Like I said above I put the number of days completed at the bottom. I have never used them this year because I didn’t want to. It just didn’t serve me this year just it didn’t serve me last year either. 

2022: This one is a preview to my 2022 habit trackers; I am tracking 24 things next year. I have changed some of them because I want to make sure that I am tracking what I need and want to track throughout my year. I will probably do quotes underneath each like I used to because that was fun, I just don’t know yet though so we will find out next year. Honestly, I just put more Washi Tape underneath it because I didn’t want the pages to be too fussy.  

So, there we have it, four and into five years of Bullet Journaling, next year I will have two Bullet Journals between my yearly and my book so we are in for a treat as I move through the year. I know that this post isn’t super long and these posts usually aren’t. 

If you want to see all my other comparison posts, you totally can! Yearly covers, book cases, monthly covers, and mood trackers.

I am actually not sure when this post is going to go live, I have to check on my calendar. Beginning of December it looks like, so I hope everyone has a great start to the week and I will be back on Wednesday with another post. 

Until then I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy! 

-MJ. 

Bullet Journal Comparison #4: Mood Trackers

.Reading time 7 minutes.

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

MJ’s 2021 Bullet Journal Update #3

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ, 

            I am prepping posts because we are back to school and that means that I come home and just want to hang out so I am trying to get posts written on the weekend. I am sitting right now on the 22nd of August and this post doesn’t come out until the end of September so roll with me (roll even further with me because it’s the second week of October…oops). The more I can get done now means that I will have posts even when I don’t have the physical or creative energy to write a blog post. I am trying to force 1,000 words out a day and most days that works, but some days there is just a whistling or the dial up noise in my brain and nothing comes out. 

            On to what this post is actually about though! My 2021 Bullet Journal, if you want to read Part 1 or Part 2 to see what else I have done this year, you totally can. I already have my layout pages for 2022 done and that’s so exciting. I also know all of my themes and pages for my 2023 bullet journal which is crazy because usually I don’t even start thinking about the next year’s journal until about July. Well now I am two years ahead. I know my themes for next year I just have to figure out how to implement them on the pages. That’s going to be fun…hint hint: next year’s theme is Marvel. 

            Alright, I think that’s enough exposition and we are just going to move straight into the post. We are here covering the months July, August, and September. I cannot believe I am on the third post of four in this series for the year, it’s insane.

July: The Great Mouse Detective

Cover: This cover took me hours to finish, it was a lot of lines and drawing Big Ben was complicated. This for sure is one of my favorite covers of the year though. TGMD is so underrated and trying to get inspiration pictures for this was hard. I just watched it on Disney Plus because I needed to see certain scenes and I was unable to find the pictures online. I love this movie, it was one of my favorites as a kid and I still love it, the opening scene with Fidget still freaks me out and I am almost 30. I was going to draw the mice riding on Toby but I cannot draw that much small detail so I stuck with Toby. Who doesn’t love an animal retelling of a classic? Disney did a few of them and I love all of them. (The Great Mouse Detective and Robin Hood come to mind right away.)

Mood Tracker: Of course, it is lab equipment, I thought about doing something with Ratigan but I decided against it because there is a scene as the beginning where they are testing ink and I thought of all the chemistry equipment and ran with it. I like having fun with something I have to fill out every day and the mood tracker is one of those things and that means that I have like what I am coloring in on the daily.

Last Page: I love the invention of the flower to ballerina toy from the very beginning of the film so I drew it as best I could. I have wanted that toy since I was between four and six and saw the movie for the first time. It’s so graceful and beautiful so I had to put it in my Bullet Journal.

August: Winnie the Pooh

Cover: I think that most of us grew up on these characters, I had to watch a few of the movies on Disney Plus to make sure that I was getting things right, the one from the 70’s and the one from like 2011. I wanted the whole gang in the picture and some of the characters turned out better than others, that’s for sure. Eeyore has always been my favorite and I think that explains a lot about my personality. 

Mood Tracker: Of course, it’s honey comb, I love the Hunny pot at the bottom and I wanted something nice and simple yet effective for the mood tracker this month because I have been doing a lot with this journal. It’s fun, I love fun and the bee is dumb looking, but I love that too. 

Last Page: This is the one scene from the 1977 cartoon The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I grew up on that one and I watched it while I was working on this page. I think doing my BuJo this year Disney themed was just an excuse to get Disney Plus and rewatch all of my favorites. The scene in the movie Pooh eats too much honey at Rabbit’s house and gets stuck in the entrance. I could have drawn the view from inside Rabbit’s house where Rabbit draws on Pooh and uses him like a trophy mount and a shelf but this one was cuter. 

September: Big Hero Six

Cover: I love this movie, it was also kind of underrated, but it’s so good and so inclusive. I love Baymax so of course he had to be half of the cover. The quote is a little hard to read but it’s lines across because I love that quote. The other side is all of the character’s “battle suits” in minimalist, I guess. When I started working on this month, I actually wasn’t sure what I was going to put on this page and then this idea came to me because of a poster I saw. The movie is visually stunning and has a great story, if you have not seen it, go see it. 

Mood Tracker: Honey Lemon’s character is a bad ass (excuse the swearing, but she is) like she makes the chemical compounds without looking at the bag. It’s so cool! I ran with this one because I had no other idea, this was the idea that came to my brain and it was what I wanted to do, so I did it.

Last Page: I love “drunk” Baymax in the movie, when he starts to deflate and it’s so funny. I have a tank top that says “We jumped out a window!” and it is one of my favorites. The character of Baymax is so fun, all of the characters are so unique and it’s just one of those movies that sits with you. 

            So, there you have it, another three months in my Bullet Journal. One more of these posts and we will be heading toward my 2022 Bullet Journal. That’s still really crazy because 2021 has been a roller coaster. 

            In my last BuJo update post I talked about starting my comparison series, I did that you can check out the Yearly Covers post and my Book Case post because they are both out!

            I will see everyone later in the week with another post and I hope that everyone has a safe, happy, and healthy rest of the week!

            -MJ

Bullet Journal Comparison #1: Yearly Cover

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ, 

            This is going to be a series, I plan on having one post like this for the next several months because I need a little bit more to write about and maybe this series can help someone who is embarking on the Bullet Journal trend like I did in 2018. I blame Pinterest for a lot of things in my tactile creative arsenal and Bullet Journaling is one of them. I could link all of my Bullet Journal posts here, but that would be in a word; excessive. I will link a few important ones though, like my updates so far this year, (they are linked near the top of the linked post) my Bullet Journal supplies post, and my 2020 Bullet Journal. (again the links for all of those updates are at the top pf the linked post) 

            I don’t expect these posts to be long and rambling, I just want to talk about how much my creative process for these have changed over the years. 

            I started Bullet Journaling in 2018 because I was moving and I could never find a planner that was exactly what I wanted, Pinterest turned me on to this mythical and magical thing called Bullet Journaling. It was such a concept to me, buy a blank journal and then make it what you wanted, creating hundreds of pages out of thin air and I was up for the challenge. 

            This first post I figured could focus on one page, all of them will focus on a singular page in my journals for the last four years. My methods might be different than other Bullet Journalers, (I don’t know what to call it) but that’s alright we can all have a different method to journaling. That is the intense beauty of a Bullet Journal; it can be whatever you want it to be. 

            I am not a professional, I make mistakes in every journal, no matter how many times I have worked on them, I am working on my 2022 BuJo already and I have already made mistakes even though it is almost a carbon copy to my 2020 and 2021 BuJo in regard to the layout. 

            So my page for this post is the yearly cover. These posts are going to give some spoilers for my favorite pages this year but at the moment, I don’t care; just roll with it. 

            2018: I have no idea what I was doing when I threw this page in, I really didn’t. I remember sitting at my desk when I was still in Indiana and staring at the page hoping that it would just tell me how to make a good cover. I went with Hello in over a dozen languages and just ran with it. It was the not the most creative and at the time I will say, my 2018 Bullet Journal was very much a prototype to see if I could sustain actually doing something like this.

            2019: Who doesn’t love balloons, I wish I would have done more with them. Shading or something to make them look more like balloons and not made a few mistakes in them. It was just as simple as my 2018 yearly cover and this is honestly a page I rarely look at throughout the year, but still, I could have done better with this one. 

2020: After what we all went through in 2020 I never want to hear the phrases ‘2020 vision’, or ‘hindsight is 2020’ ever again. I was so optimist at the beginning of last year and then it was a dumpster fire. I wish that I could have seen the future and made this a dumpster instead, but we can’t see the future and that is not a super power that I would want. I loved this cover though, I loved the sunglasses and if I wasn’t a glasses human who has really poor vision I would for sure have about six pairs of sunglasses that looked exactly like these ones. 

            2021: if you were around last year and were following my BuJo posts then you will remember this castle from my October BuJo Disney spread last year. I did all Disney this year and my 2021 Bullet Journal is actually fully complete. I traced the castle, I am not going to lie, I traced it because I am not great at free-handing anything. I didn’t go for the ombre that I tried last year, with this cover I went with more of a stained glass look because I love stained glass. There is no secret there, stained glass is beautiful and scary; too many sharp edges for me to try and make. I think that last year and this year have stretched my creative vision for my Bullet Journals and this cover is my favorite so far. 

            So there it is, one page over four years. I don’t know what 2022’s cover is going to look like; I have not decided that yet. I know what my theming is next year but I have figured out very little when it comes to the actual creative part of all of it. I still have some time to figure that out before I start. I am getting all of the basic pages in as well as the monthly days because I know if I don’t I will fall behind and it won’t be fun. It will be a slog to get through like I did for all of 2018, 2019, and the beginning of 2020 and now I am ahead and I want to be. 

            Covers are just the beginning, I will be comparing a lot of pages and some will look really similar because I have found that if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I have certain pages that I love and have the same year after year because that is what makes sense to me. You may think it’s lazy to copy a page year after year, I don’t see it that way. I see it as finding something that works for you and sticking with it until something better comes along. 

            Alright, I will see everyone mid-week with another post, I hope that everyone out there is staying safe, happy, and healthy. Have a good start to the week! 

            -MJ