This past summer, I discovered something known as bullet journaling. I was first introduced to it by my roommate, who always has beautifully crafted fonts and designs in her journal. I dismissed the idea, thinking I wasn’t “artsy” enough to start a bullet journal of my own.
When I returned home from college for the summer, my friend gave me a journal she had bought while abroad in Spain. The pages were blank, and as I flipped through them, she said “maybe you can do bullet journaling or something!” The gears started turning in my head and then suddenly I was up late that night googling bullet journal ideas.
Why am I so drawn to bullet journals, you may ask? I love to write, but sometimes keeping a regular journal can be too much work for me. Some days I may have a huge urge to write things down, but I don’t do it because I feel like I would have to give a lot of context in my journal in order for everything to make sense (of course, there are no rules about this but that’s just how I feel). What I like about bullet journaling is you can just write little snippets (bullets!) of a memory, a goal, a song… something that will allow you to look back on a certain moment and remember. And you can organize it any way you want.
Here are some of the pictures I found online to give you an idea. BUT I would like to say that you should not feel intimidated by how intense some of these look. Again, I am not anywhere NEAR an artsy person, and doing something like these pictures would stress me out to no end. But it’s fun to see the different things you may want to write about or keep track of!
As you can see, a lot of these are visually pleasing and focus on the artsy details. What I love about bullet journaling is the different boxes you can create to form a template for what to write. And with that in mind, this is what my journal looks like (it’s about as simple as one can get):
The gratitude log is one of my favorite sections. Each day, I write a line about something that happened that day that made me happy. Even when it’s been a tough day, this section allows me to focus on the positive things.
Bullet journals give you so many possibilities and opportunities to document the little things in life! My journal is a dotted Moleskine journal that is nice and flexible and has good pages for tracing lines. Stop by your nearest stationary store and pick out whatever inspires you the most. Happy journaling!