I started a bullet journal on impulse
I fell in love with a yellow dotted journal when I was in London, and it convinced me to make the leap to start bullet journaling this 2018. I haven’t regretted since.
For a person who isn’t artistically inclined, I really struggled at first. But I suppose I didn’t do a bad job so far! In fact, I’ve started enjoying it more and more…
Here are my expectations vs reality after I started a bullet journal:
Expectations
1. Bullet journaling requires artistic sense.
This goes without saying right? I mean if you just search #bujo or #bulletjournal on Instagram, the feed is pretty #goals. People put in some real effort on their journal spreads! All those washi tape, colour pens, calligraphy, sketches etc. It really looks incredible. Like an adult arts & crafts project.
2. It will be time-consuming.
If I were to sketch my journal spreads in pencil before I went over it in pen, and try to perfect my strokes each time, I imagined the entire process of journaling to be a really long and arduous process.
3. My journal will look nice and pretty.
I did do a lot of prior research on Pinterest before starting, so I was really picturing my journal to look like one of those stellar examples. The themed spreads, the complementary colours, the amazing layouts etc. Probably wasn’t being very realistic huh?
reality
1. I use Pinterest for inspirations and references.
Without Pinterest, I would be absolutely lost with my plain bullet journal. With Pinterest, I was really spoilt for choice with the multitude of templates and pictures of different spreads. But either way, I started Pinterest boards for calligraphy, doodles, and bullet journal spreads, and they’ve helped plenty! If you want to follow it, it’s right here!
2. Designing spreads do take a long time, but it gets faster.
No joke, journaling did take me a reallllllly longgggggg time. I want to say I expected it, but I didn’t think I would take half a day to draw a week’s spread?!?! Well, the pages did look pretty good at the end of the day, but it sure seemed like a huge waste of time at first.
At the start, I wanted to experiment with almost every format I came across on Pinterest, because they were all looked really awesome! Nowadays, when I’m running out of time, or I’m lazy, I’ll just go back to my familiar/favourite spreads. Also, you do get more familiar with the number of cells in a page, and have more references on previous pages to refer to as time goes on, so the entire process does get easier and faster!!!
3. Fake it till you make it with calligraphy.
Calligraphy must be one of the most iconic features in bullet journal spreads: page titles, dates, impactful quotes, and etc. It looks so fitting with the whole DIY concept right? HELL it’s so difficult though. My hand just doesn’t go in the strokes I want it to.
BUT, fake it till you make it!!! Instead of doing calligraphy with a brush pen – the legitimate way -, use a thin pen and just colour in the parts that should be thicker. It looks pretty legit at the end still, but I’m sure it’ll be about 10x faster if you just master the calligraphy technique. I will make it eventually! (i hope)
4. It definitely isn’t pretty all the time.
When you’re using anything other than a pencil, you can’t go ctrl+v and do it again. You’ll just have to live with those mistakes if you screw up – wow look, life lessons! I’ve made a couple of mistakes for sure, like writing 30 twice instead of writing 31 on the last day of March. So… I had to just stick a plain paper sticker over it and write it again. Or just roll with the mistake, it usually isn’t as bad as you think it is anyway.
Till this day, I’ve had a scheduler/planner each year since I was 15. I love the feeling of being organised, and being able to look back at everything I’ve done. It’s also very satisfying to be ticking off my tasks on the checklist each day hehehe.