lara

(preface: sorry if this clogs the feed. i offer up a shiny rock for forgiveness) I have So Many Opinions And Memories on this. I was the first amongst the people I knew to use a bullet journal way back at the end of 2018. The extent of my decoration has always really been writing headings in a colour, usually the same one for the whole month that I associated with that month firstly in a lined journal, then a blank journal, and then dot grid journals when it became more popular. I got some washi tapes just to see if I liked it because I heard of it from tumblr and instagram (fun fact: the washi tape usage cured my sticker anxiety because there was just So Much that I got sick of it). I remember one of my friends was SO enamored with bullet journalling in the "correct" way that she saw online so like that calligraphy pen headings, the minimalist washi tapes, the art drawn into the books etc. She would get frustrated that bullet journalling was so hard to keep up with because it had to look pretty otherwise its not bullet journalling. I would remind her that its meant to help her at the end of the day and if making it pretty would stop it from being helpful, then its a sign to reign in the pretty factor. Nothing I said would help her because her reasoning kept coming back around to "well no I have to do it like this because everyone else does it like this which means their way is correct and I have to do this correctly". I genuinely hate the idea that something has to be pretty to be useful. My bullet journalling has evolved into scribbling things into an old and falling apart exercise book with a pencil I found on the ground because that is the easiest and most useful thing for my brain at the moment. So many people like my friend could have benefited so greatly from bullet journalling but have fallen prey to the idea of aesthetics and having to do things "correctly". You are free, even encouraged, to do things ugly and wrong!