Bandwagon Update

I've now been bullet journaling for four months.

I've invested in a Leuchtturm 1917 (in pink, of course), and it is being put to good use. I put my habit tracker in there, along with the NaNoWriMo word count tracker that you've already seen in previous posts. There's a month-at-a-glace page that I stole right out of Ryder Carroll's The Bullet Journal Method, and I merged that spread with a colour-coded budget and a three-point-daily mood tracker -- all on a two-page spread. It's a lot of information all in one place, but that's exactly the point. The colour coding helps a LOT and it's really helpful to have events, money, and mental health information for a full month all at a glance in order to see patterns (particularly since money is a very strong predictor for my mental health). I've put a suicide safety plan spread in there as well with things to try to distract myself, people to contact (with phone numbers), and a list of reasons to live.

I wouldn't say the impact on my life is dramatic, but it's definitely noticeable. I'm remembering things now -- to the point where if I tell my husband that I wrote it down in the book, he knows I'll remember. This was a man who could not (and I think still can't) wrap his head around the concept of needing to write things down to remember them; a man who used to get angry and frustrated with me multiple times every single day because I forgot something and he couldn't understand how I could forget such important things so often. We still argue, but it's far, FAR less than we did before I started bullet journaling.

In the daily logs, I've been marking things that made me happy with a pink heart instead of a bullet. Everything else in the daily logs is written in my black pen, so the pink hearts really stand out. I have an unofficial goal to have at least one pink heart bullet per day. Some days I really have to reach for it, and some days it doesn't happen at all, but it's something to strive for. (Today there will definitely be a pink heart because the local Tim Horton's had a sprinkle and jam doughnut for literally the first time since I moved here in summer 2020.)

My journal is still not flowery or a crash course in visual design and probably never will be. Just colour coding numbers for the mood and budget trackers are enough to keep me busy. But it's practical and everything is in one place, and those are more important to me than prettiness.

Probably the thing I like the most about it is the fact that everything is in one place. I used to have one notebook for dance videos in the works, one for dance class notes, one for choreography in progress, one for writing ideas, one specifically for Kyrie, one for 'random stuff,' one for journaling my actual thoughts and concerns, one for scheduling appointments, one for budget tracking... all of those have been condensed into a 250-page dot journal and a $3 pack of pens from Wal-Mart (the Papermate InkJoy coloured pens, which bleed a little and can be a tiny bit gloppy, except for the black, but the colours are amazing, the price is right, and I will not write with anything besides Papermate because I love the feel of their pens. I've been a Papermate devotee since my early teens and I will stop using them when you pry my Flexgrip Ultra 0.8 from my cold dead hands).

To be perfectly honest with you, everything that has happened to me since summer 2019 is a complete blank in my memory. I don't remember much of anything from 2020. I can only call up the very vaguest of memories from my own wedding in August 2020. A good part of 2021 is gone as well. By the time I finished an eight-hour work shift, I would not be able to tell you anything that happened at the beginning of the same shift. I couldn't even hold a conversation outside of my semi-scripted drive-thru order-taker conversations because the meanings of concepts and words were just -- gone (which in turn impacted my ability to make art and engage with the people around me, which pushed me further into depression and isolation). I had no past, and therefore no present and no future. I felt adrift in an endless ocean where time didn't exist. It was not freeing, as one would be inclined to think -- in fact, it was terrifying. When there is no time, there is nothing else. Nothing exists. It was like being stuck in an abyss. I was losing myself. I had no idea who I even was anymore because I had nothing to look back on, no reference point. Having this journal is helping me feel more grounded and like I'm an actual person rather than just a phantom in a shadowland. I have 'yesterdays' again now, and I didn't for two years. I'm only just starting to rebuild an awareness of myself as a real human being who exists in a real place and not a featureless ghost floating aimlessly in an endless cloud, and so far this journal is a large part in that.

Maybe I'll even manage to remember another update in a couple of months.