☕🐛

I'm a 26 year old, disabled man. I was in an accident that left me with chronic low back pain. I also have POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) which is much better managed now. I'm also autistic and in major burnout. I have been out of work for over a year now due to the accident. I am college educated with a dual degree that I have yet to use job-wise. I am looking to go back to school and re-enter the workforce, hopefully to land in a field with more job security than my last that is also more disability friendly.

I also have a small studio apartment that deeply needs decluttering, cleaning, and reorganization. Prior to the accident most of the household chores fell on me. Now that I've been disabled, those things no longer get done. I have depression and anxiety and am now just entirely fed up with the state of our living space.

So this is a two-fold project. I wish I could focus on some health goals as well, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I have consultation for potential spinal surgery coming up and the exclusion of health goals might change depending on how that goes.

I'm hoping to use this blog as a sort of digital companion to my physical planner. I'd like to share my planner spreads from day to day. I will be experimenting a lot of with planner layout, customized in an A5 grid notebook from the ground up because most planners I meet, I do not like, lol.

At least some of this planner will be based off of a planner I was given in college while I was in an academic mentorship program that helped me a great deal. To this day it's the best planner I've ever used and yet I've never found a similar planner, so I'm going to recreate it!

cute pencils

pencil sharpener

mechanical pencil refills

cute pencil case

sticky note tabs

transparent sticky notes

purple & pink sticky notes

stickers!!!

washi tape (esp. 0.5 in.-1 in.)

highlighters

more colored pen packs

cute paper clips 🖇️

BuJo progress from yesterday 🙂‍↕️

+ sticker to declutter zones page

+ 6 month overview page

• January weekly overviews {19th-31st}

+ Mental health pixel tracker {💛= yes/💜= no}

What I learned:

• Alcohol markers bleed through, use Crayola markers instead!

a year long overview all at once felt really... overwhelming. i have a lot of feelings of sadness, rage, disappointment, hopelessness with how much time has passed since i became physically disabled (2 years this January) and since I've been unemployed (a little over a year). the thought of potentially spending another year much the same way terrified me. but 6 months isn't so bad. and it ends on my birthday month, something to try and look forward to.

did bare minimum starter lines for the last weekly overview for January. and started a new tracker.

the tracker might seem kind of macabre? to other people. but i really like how simple it is. it's based around a single yes or no question: "is there hope?"

it's meant to function basically as a mental health tracker. days where i feel optimistic versus days i feel hopeless. i'm still trying to decide if I'm going to keep it just one color yes, second color no or if i'm going to make it more of a gradient (degrees of optimism/hopelessness). i'm leaning more towards simple yes/no.

i am trying to be gentle with myself while i institute all of this. i don't want a tracker that's too complicated because i know i won't be able to commit to using it. and having too many choices will probably lead to decision fatigue.

i made some mistakes, too. but i learned new things from it. my alcohol markers bleed through the paper (unfortunate). and i need to be extra careful staying up too late to journal because it drastically effects my ability to count, lol.

don't get me wrong, i love all the artistic, beautiful, creative spreads but when that's all you see it feels really bad when you can't even come anywhere close to producing anything similar.

☕🐛 a weekly spread based on hobonichi's weekly planner. my lines are just okay lol

will probably add in some to dos and schedule some rest. just deciding bc today was more rest than anything. but that's okay. i need to plan for rest too!!

as you can see, i have an MRI this Sunday. a little nervous bc i have to get some of my piercings switched out to plastic and i need to coordinate when to see the piercer based on finances.

also need to find a way to make this a little more visually appealing. but i have maxed out my ability to use my lap desk for the day (hurty 😵‍💫).