I realise that not everyone is as stationery and planner obsessed as I am, so be warned this post does contain a bit of geeking out in regards to that area. For those who are curious, read on!

I have never been a person who was able to use a journal or a homework diary. I would always become distracted or discouraged. We used to receive a homework diary for every year while I was at school. I was always the kid who ended up using it for a day or a week (sometimes not even opening it). Thereafter I would lose track of it completely. Usually it would resurface at the end of the year when I cleaned out my pack-back. The majority of my school diaries are crumpled up and forgotten somewhere.

This changed when I got to university. I needed a way to keep track of my homework and assignments. Lecturers wouldn’t remind us about deadlines, with them constantly showcased on the whiteboard, like our teachers did in school. Sometimes we even have to locate the deadlines for ourselves because of the amount of planning we have to do beforehand to get everything done in time.

This is when I decided to make use of the yearly diaries from Typo. I did this for 2015 and the majority of 2016. By the end of the latter, I had discovered all sorts of different planning methods online and I wanted to plan more things but I didn’t want to clutter up my diary. I was only using them for uni related plans and homework. To plan my blog and personal life was going to require a lot more space…

At the beginning of 2017 I decided to take a few steps into the world of bullet journaling. I have previously mentioned this in my post concerning The Written Word.

I was sitting alone at home in my house in South Africa. I had just finished decorating a whole bunch of pages for my life binder.

For those of you who are not planner obsessed like I have become, a bullet journal is a method of planning where you simply take any empty notebook and plan your life schedule however you like. There are a few suggested layouts and methods described by the creator Ryder Carroll.

A life binder is another way of organizing your schedule but by using a binder with tabs for each area of your life. For example, work, school, meal planning and so on.

Both of these methods of organisation gives you the freedom to plan your life in a method that works for you. You don’t have the restrictions of a diary or planner that have preset dates and layouts. What happens when you do nothing for a week? Or when you wish that you had a whole extra page to write down a shopping list next to your busy schedule? This is why I prefer a planning system that I can change depending on my needs for a particular day, week or month (or even a year).

After spending a whole day with duct tape and all manner of colourful pens and stickers, creating calendars and everything else, I was second guessing myself. I  looked back at my life binder, considered the size and everything that still had to go into it. It was so full of everything that I had planned for months in advance that I would potentially require in a binder that holds my life.

At the time when I was planning my life binder, I was still very curious about bullet journaling. I had just purchased a few bound notebooks from Typo and I was scrolling through bullet journal spreads on Pinterest. On a whim I decided to try out a few bullet journal spreads in one of my new notebooks. It was the beginning of the year and I wanted something more to do after having so much fun with making stickers and printouts and decorating the pages for my life binder.

For many moons I had been intrigued by the world of bullet journaling but decided on a binder because I thought I would prefer the ability to move pages around as I needed. However I later decided that that would not be necessary for everything. The order of the months and days of the week don’t change. So it didn’t make sense to want to move them around.

So, I tried out a bullet journal and surprisingly I fell in love with it. On a whim and with a touch of writers block, I decided to film a Bullet Journal Flip Through video and create a YouTube channel to correspond with my blog. I have been mulling over the idea for a while before I decided to just go for it.

For those interested in the results, you can find my video about my First Bullet Journal here and my YouTube channel here.

I was aching to do something creative and I had already planned out the week in my second bullet journal (the first one only lasted to the beginning of April before it was full). I was sitting at home, watching a ton of other peoples videos to distract myself from life and all the drama. Then I decided that I would make a video of my own first bullet journal to document a part of my journey. It was a journey of self discovery and played an enormous role in me getting back in touch with my creative side. Remembering how much I used to love art and drawing, until I convinced myself that I would never be good at any of it, so why even try.

Bullet Journaling helped me to see that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I’m not an award winning artist. It doesn’t matter if my handwriting is messy or if I make a mistake or ten. If you are doing something that puts a smile on your face and gives you direction in life, none of those things matter.

Perfectionism is the silk-lined coffin for creativity…

This is my motto for the year, and I am trying to implement this in every aspect of my life. I know so many more people who can do with following the same advice. Don’t be afraid of not being perfect. The beauty of everything lies in the things that make them unique and different.

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