JANUARY FIRST

Crappy New Years, peeps! The time around New Years is usually a pretty difficult time for me. Thinking about how I have lived another year and have to start a new one. I don’t understand how I’m still here, why I’m still here. It’s just every year I get this panic-y feeling. Another wasted year, another year over due.

I wanted to spend New Years Eve alone, just practising some self care for myself. I was going to cat- and dog sit for them while my parents visited my aunt and uncle with a couple of family friends. They cancelled last minute due to Covid, so I stayed. I know New Years is yet another holiday my parents appreciate, and where they value family time, so Leesi and I didn’t go home to our apartment.

It actually turned out alright, my mother and I found out Bones was available for only thirty more days(!!) on our streaming service, so we watched that while my dad was in the upstairs living room watching horse races and the usual movies that aires around this time here in Norway. My mom and I have only 29 days to watch the remaining 3 and 1/2 seasons of Bones now. (I think we can do it).

I went to sleep at 23:00 yesterday. It’s not a big deal for me to see the fireworks. The fur babies were doing so great yesterday. The fireworks started slowly at around 16:00 and they barked a little at the first few bangs, but it seemed they understood that it was going to bang a little more that evening, so they either went to sleep or came onto my lap for sleepy cuddles. I am so grateful they are so calm about it, I can’t even imagine the stress and sadness people with nervous and stressed out animals on New Years Eve feel, and especially the animals themselves. I truly feel for them.

My parents, bringing Koda with them, left for the cabin this morning, and I’m staying at their house to watch the Kalypso. She’s currently fully stretched out on the living room rug, I think she appreciates having the space to herself. Well, Khaleesi is also here with us of course, but she’s pretty tired out from last night. I think this is going to be a pretty chilled out day.

I have layed out my unused A&O book now, and my new A&O Acrylograph pens, and I’m thinking of starting off the year in my new book. I brought all my bujo stuff with me when coming here just to be sure I didn’t miss anything, haha. I hope you had a great New Years Eve and I wish you all the best for the coming year ❤

– E.J

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GOING BACK TO BASICS: REVIVING MY BULLET JOURNALIST

After getting out of my apathetic rut I’ve wanted to come back to bullet journaling. I kind of fell out of the system some time before physically stopping to bujo. I’ve used this beautiful Archer & Olive book and been very into collaging and making it (in my opinion) pretty. And, as with many others, this became the bane of my actual bullet journaling.

I had to make a thought through collage over two pages before I could even write down a single letter and being as obsessive as I am I spent quite some time actually finishing the collages. I took my time and did enjoy myself too, but spending this time collaging made my eyes, my back (the kitchen table is not a good place to sit), and my head tired, so I didn’t bujo. I just dotted down what I had done at the end of the day and wrote a journal entry, and it was the same the next day, (if my head was up for it).

I didn’t have time or energy left to think, plan, organize, and set (and achieve!!) my goals.

Without the bullet journal to clear and straighten my head, I wasn’t very productive. I also didn’t get to unload through the day, which ended up with me being stuck with a mess of thoughts. I believe that when unloading and getting your mind down on paper, you let things go a bit. No, not completely, but enough to down the pressure a bit. You get to reflect while the pen does it’s work and maybe it makes it easier to put things away for a little while.

For my restart I’m stripping it down and go back to basics. No fuzz, no collages, no intricate layouts, no overthinking. Just black on white. The basic bujo. (I will even try to restrain myself from using washi tapes). I know this will make it more accessible to me, and that is a big point of the bullet journal – it should be easy to use, it shouldn’t take time, it shouldn’t be a bother.

I’m aching to get back some clarity of mind, and to (hopefully) up my productivity and get shit done. I mean, it’s already helping. I cleared my head and got ready for a meeting on Friday, and didn’t go into it like an unprepared zombie like I would have done just a few weeks ago. Also, I’ve been wanting to play on my Switch all day, but I had “finish post” dotted down today, and here we are!

If you bullet journal, do you do basic bujo or creative bujo? If you do creative, do you also find that you compromise a bit on the bullet journal system to be more creative?

Happy weekend!

x Almond

RAMBLING, IDENTITY CRISIS, WORDS OF WISDOM

Hello guys! I’m sorry for the week-long absence, I guess I just needed a few days to myself. I’m kind of having an identity crisis, because I’m in a rut when it comes to bujoing/journaling. It makes me feel like such a failure that the one of the things I consider to be the biggest parts of my personality doesn’t spark the same joy at the moment. I thought it was part of “the real deal”, but now I’m lost. Have I been faking it? Is there any part of me that is truly “me”? Am I even real? I’m spiralling down in those thoughts. But over to something that is a bit more fun…

I bought a Switch! Impulse? Comfort-buy? Reward? Search for a new piece of identity? Ooo, shiny? I don’t know, maybe all of the above? What I do know is that I don’t regret it. I’ve always wanted to be a “gamer” in a small sense of the word, (or wanted? I mean I loved playing Narnia on my friends Playstation when we were kids), but I never dared.

Thoughts like “you’re not good enough”, “people will laugh at you”, “others have been doing this longer than you, who do you think you are” have been central in my mind. Not only when it comes to this, but with other activities – like drawing.

But just because someone may be better at you at something doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, it doesn’t mean you should compromise on your own search of joy and happiness!

Well, that was it for todays rambling :’) I’m going to take out my Switch now and play for a couple of hours. I bought Zelda – Breath of the Wild and it’s such a beautiful game. I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Have you tried it? Do you have a Switch? Are there any games you recommend?

x Almond

I KNOW AND I DON’T KNOW

It’s been two hours since I got home and my legs are finally starting to calm down. My mind is a different story, it’s still racing one hundred miles a minute. For what? Grocery shopping. How can such a normal thing set me off that much?

It’s the people. It’s what I perceive as judging looks and mocking smiles; distaste and critique of my being. I’m certain that my perceptions are real, but I also know it’s a symptom of my AvPD. I know – and I don’t know – that it’s an overreaction and (hopefully) not true, so why am I still feeling this way? Shouldn’t me being aware of it have burst the bubble?

Over to something more related to the photos… I wanted to show you my spread from week 2. It turned out to be one spread due to my flu and being chained to the couch, and Thursday to Sunday was more like a summary. This week I’m more in the game again, and I’m writing every day. It feels good to be back on track.

The smell of lasagna has filled the room now, which means it’s dinner time. I hope everyone is having a good weekend! Tomorrow I’m going to the movies with my mom and my aunt to finish it off. What have you been doing this weekend?

x Almond

OLD JOURNAL SPREAD AND MIND CRAMPS

My head has been a mess these past few days. A complete, utter mess. But it’s also so empty. Intense thoughts filled with the whole spectrum of emotions fly by at the speed of light. There’s so much going on one second, and it’s gone the next. From everything to nothing. Over and over. I’m not sure how to describe it other than, maybe, mind cramps?

I can’t grasp everything that passes through my head and it makes me feel at a loss and that’s where the emptiness comes in. It puts me off not even being able to make out what’s going on in my own mind most of the time. Like I’m not good enough somehow. To identify my emotions have never been my strong suit, though. It’s a chaos and it’s tiring. I’m left feeling lost.

So that was the rant-of-the-day, but anyways… I have set up my bullet journal for the new year and started on January, but I have some spreads from last year that I want to show you first. Like this weekly reflection from week 49.

It’s not my best work visually, but it did serve its purpose. I usually have some standard questions I answer in my weekly reflections, like what I can improve the next week, what worked and what did not work, what I was grateful for, what I can forgive myself for and let go of, and so on. I plan on getting back to them this year as I find they can be quite productive.

Above you can see the printer I use for photos in my journal. It’s the Kodak Photo Printer Mini 2. I tried the HP Sprocket for a little while, but found that the images turned out really blue and I spent 2-3 sheets of “film” on trying to get them edited perfectly, and I felt like that was too much of a waste. This one has better colour rendering (in my opinion).

I actually have some plans and goals for my (bullet) journaling in 2020 which I thought I’d share in another post, (because this post is already too long, haha). But to finish off, what is your goal with your (bullet) journal this year? Is there something you’d like to get better at or something you want it to help you with? And how do you plan on accomplishing this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

x Almond