Apologies as I have photos, on my phone, that I have yet to download…not that they really tell the story I am about to reveal here.

I have finished all of the KBujo class (this is Knitsonik’s Bullet Journal class; it is not an affiliate link). It offered me a clearer way for me to work with my bullet journal.

I have been taking more junk journal classes, been watching a lot of other junk journal and bullet journal videos. Yes, I am making many more journals these past few weeks.

It’s been an interesting journey for me, one that I will say that continues on as I move forward. I love the feel and the sound of hand-dyed papers, be it done with coffee or tea or fabric dye or egg dye or food coloring…hey, there’s been a lot of experimenting going on here lately.

Dangling bits, jingly bits, beads, and paperclips with decorations and doodads, pockets and tip-ins and inserts. It’s been interesting lately.

Right now I am using my orange bullet journal, the one called Solveig. You can see a walk-through of the early version of it in this journal here in this post. She has come a long way since then. September is the very first month that I have stepped into using this journal fully and completely…well, as completely as I can with the addition of the Passion Planner Daily Journal.

I play with collage in her. I glue strange things in at random for … no real reason other than I like it and/or I want to. I bought some of the coolest dangliest paper clips I have ever seen from a seller on Etsy (I am not sure if she wants me to publicize her shop; I have had sellers ask me not to several times so I don’t really do it unless I ask specifically first.) and I use those, and pocket paper clips — as well as bookmarks, Oli clips, tabs, binder clips…all sorts of interesting things of late.

The journal itself has begun to fall apart…before I started to use it so exclusively this month…the front and back covers have torn away from the endpapers and the binding/spine. The actual spine itself is still solidly attached to the cover. I decided, after trying to glue the breaking-away bits and it not working a bit, that I should tie the book to the cover…I took three strands of yarn and tried to evenly distribute them throughout the book. Today, I added some novelty yarn in four new places within the journal, because it is pretty and to also add some resilience to the entire book.

As I have read Ryder Carroll’s book, what I took away from it is that you take what he offers about how to bullet journal and adjust it to your needs in what works for you. I think I have found something that is working for me now…with plans to expand into a different iteration once I am finished using my Passion Planner Daily Planner — at the end of this year.

I do have my written journal, where I do my daily journaling, in a different journal. Last night I was bemoaning the fact that I have to wait until January 2022 to start working in my bullet journal the way I am planning to work in it…and then it hit me…technically I can stop at any time. Just because I paid for them doesn’t mean I am required to make use of them. I know I have set up the full year (for 2021) of daily planners with the monthly tabs and the dates on every spread…but…there are no planner police. I will not be punished if I do not use the journal for its original purpose. As I wrote last night it struck me that..although my OCD will not allow me to stop using my daily planner until the end of September…I have no reason to pull out the fourth and final book of my four daily planners for the year and start using it.

So, come October 1, judging by how I am progressing through my current bullet journal, I will more than likely be in another bujo by October. I am hoping I will be able to begin the new bujo for October and not have to start one before September is over…but I never know until I reach the space where I need to crack open a new journal.

I am already thinking ahead to the next journal I will need, whether it is for October, or for the rest of September…I am already running some experiments on other journals I have (because I have a butt-ton of bought journals sitting on shelves, boxed up in crats, all just sitting there waiting for me to use them–and some have been waiting for YEARS…) where I brush on coffee dye…or spritz on various other colors/sprays that I have made. Not the spray inks–they always seem to clog up and become uneven and splatter and not look good. So the things I am using are things I have mixed up and am trying on my own. I plan to spatter and splatter the pages in the new journal, once I settle on a method…much like a junk journal…and then do my usual bujo spreads and so forth. No pockets and belly bands included in the journal…at least not yet.

This is just my starting point…and I will include the things I have been including in my daily planner–which is where I keep track of what I have accomplished/done for the day, what arrived through the mail, what we ordered, where we went, little notes here and there on different things, weather, mood, sleep tracking…all of that will be moved into my bujo daily pages.

I am excited to see where this goes.