I’m taking my journaling digital and I’m really hoping this is the last piece of the puzzle.
In all my years of being a “bad” student, many accountability and reward/punishment methods were employed to get me to complete my homework. They’d last about two weeks. The first week my teacher would be there staying on top of my progress, the second week I’d be left to my own devices and the method in question would cave under the pressure.
Two weeks. And then I’d be back to phone calls home and my mom crying and my dad in the mood to break things but not actually breaking things (I think I have his rosary to thank for the not breaking things). How long have I been bullet journaling?
TWO AND A HALF YEARS.
Granted, I’ve tweaked the system a lot, but my daily entries look about the same as anyone else’s (apart from the fact that I write backwards in cursive, of course) and my tweaks have allowed me to figure out exactly what works for me in terms of staying on top of the workload I create for myself as a writer/volunteer/employee.
Thing is, I’ve done everything to iterate crafting the perfect Get Stuff Done morning for myself. And I’ve been struggling for a wile with how to bring that level of iterative craft to making the most of my afternoons and evenings.
Mostly because the afternoons/evenings have been when I typically leave the house to go do things like buy groceries and volunteer and spend time with friends. And leaving the house with 1.5-inch 3-ring binder filled with a couple hundred sheets of paper (my first iteration away from having to continuously buy new journals) feels exactly as burdensome as it sounds even though I’m much better at managing my OCD with my journal on hand.
I’ve needed a way to take my journal/number one OCD-management tool with me out into the world without it being its own source of “drama” while I’m out and about.
So I took the plunge and bought an iPad 6 and Apple Pencil. I needed a new “laptop” anyway, and creating all my own spreads in the GoodNotes app is a lot of fun. But it’s early days for this iteration to my journaling and only time will tell which is why I’m NOT actually gushing about this move right now.
I’m just letting you know, that I feel I’m off to a very good start. It’s already much lighter/smaller than my Sandy Frink notebook, I’m having a very hard time not playing with it and trying to make all the iterations at once, and I’m very much looking forward to testing it in the field by leaving the house with it.
It’s a new toy. I’m allowed to be excited. I’m just not allowed to properly gush until the thing has proven itself.
Also published on Medium.