Slanted Rays

Hello! I have been bullet journaling with relative consistency since January 2018. Since it has been awhile since my early attempts at bullet journaling, I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of my earlier bullet journals. Today, we are looking at my very first bullet journal. This is my very first monthly spread. As you can tell, I barely left any room for a calendar. At this time, my bullet journal often prioritized aesthetics over functionality. On the left page of this spread, I have written "january" in cursive and decorated it with a circular pattern. On the right page of this spread, I have drawn a small calendar for the month of January 2018, with important dates written inside. Here is a typical weekly spread from my first month of bullet journaling. If you look closely, you may notice that I was constantly moving tasks from one day to the next, without actually getting them done. At this stage in my bullet journaling venture, I remember...

A picture of Collins Lake. The image is framed by a hanging, leafy tree branch on top. Foliage clusters at the bottom right of the picture, with pine trees in the background. The lake is at the left side of the image, and it expands into the horizon. Hello! I was so much more productive today! I also very briefly panicked about how many work hours I need to complete before my part-time administrative gig ends on August 31. My problem doesn't seem to be that I cannot get work done; instead, I will have a few highly efficient days where I get most of the work done, and then find myself monotonously doing the remaining tasks. It feels unfair and self-serving to decrease my work speed, but efficiency is an inconvenient skill when you are paid by the hour. This picture features the last parts of my accomplishments list from yesterday, and the majority of today's media consumption tracking in my bullet journal. Today's date is written in French about a fifth down the p...

An image of my two bullet journal pages from Friday through most of today. My bullet journal is a repurposed gardening journal from around the 1970s, and the pages are a dark cream color. The pre-printed headers read "Things to do in July" and "Things to do in August", and I have decorated them with carousel horse stickers. For Friday and today, I have a long list of accomplishments, marked by smiley faces. My ticket to Friday's basketball game and my wristband from Sunsplash are taped into the notebook. Hello! I am still crawling slowly out of the slump. In doing so, I have defaulted to using The Accomplishments List. The Accomplishments List is my term for the lists I make of things I have done, using a smiley face in place of my usual bullet points. Usually, these lists include what are essentially signs of life beyond social media scrolling and YouTube. So, I will include items like "watched an episode of Queer Eye " and "took a shower...

A beautiful view from the balcony of Bibliothèque François Mitterand Hello! I am writing this from the depths of a terrible cold. I guess that it isn't entirely surprising that I'm sick; I can hear people sniffling and sneezing throughout the metro, and this is my first extended stay in a cold climate. But, it is definitely frustrating that I set some semi-adventurous goals on Sunday and then was sick by Tuesday. My host mom took me to the pharmacy, recounted my symptoms to the pharmacist in detail, and had me buy a substantial amount of cold medicine. She was very insistent that "You take medicine, and, if the medicine doesn't help, you go to the doctor". I guess that this is what life is like in a country with an affordable health care system? Since I don't have any pre-existing conditions that could be affected by a cold, I would never go to the doctor for a cold. I've only barely come around to taking medication for colds, and even that is as a s...