Hey there. Hope you’re doing alright.
Last year, I wrote about starting a journal. (The post is gone now, but that’s fine.) As someone who has never really journaled, I went into it with high expectations.
Here’s the second entry, from May 1st, 2022:
It’s been over than a year since I started! How did things change from then to now?
In 2022, I was keeping a work journal of my day to day tasks. This helped me track what I working on, what my goals were, and any important events that were happening. Was it making me a better worker? Maybe. It was my first year at my new job, and I think, more than anything, I needed to note what my responsibilities were day to day. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of everything at this job, I feel the need to track less.
Outside of work in 2022, life felt directionless and unfulfilling. Things weren’t too great, and at the end of the day there wasn’t much I wanted to do. But if I was doing great professionally, why couldn’t I apply my successful techniques from work to the rest of life?
Looking back, I was actually burning out. Trying to prove myself as a first-year educator is exhausting. When I got home, I was too tired to do anything. My “successful” techniques weren’t creating a healthy work/life balance — and I wasn’t going to benefit from them at home.
In 2023, I’m working toward having a nicer balance to things. At work, there is structure and routine, and at home, things are more freeform. That’s a good thing! I didn’t need to spend my time maximizing productivity at home. I just needed a little bit of organization for my thoughts and feelings.
Have you heard of bullet journaling? I think it can help you track your life, but only if you put in the work to maintain it. I was not (and I’m still not) in the proper headspace to put work into organizing my life into tasks, bullet points, and calendars. And I don’t want to! If I had all of that in one place, the journal would become a dreadful object instead of a treasured one.
What did my journal become? Just a journal. I was hoping that I would rely on my phone less, but my phone’s actually fantastic at tracking my life.
My journal didn’t become a task planner. I write down my goals and dreams, but I don’t get upset with myself for not reaching them. I check my phone all the time, so I might as well put tasks and reminders on there. Shoutout to the reminders app, you’re a hero.
It didn’t become a calendar. I write down things that I’m excited about, but I don’t constantly flip through pages and reference events and future dates. I don’t plan that much outside of work anyway.
It’s not a budget organizer. I started journaling with the intention of eventually tracking how much I spend each month, but that’s math, and I don’t want to do math at home. That’s fine, there are apps for budgeting, too. In my journal I write down how much I spend over each day. A glance through the current week’s pages is enough to inform my buying decisions for the next week.
Looking back, I shouldn’t have tried to make my home life more productive. I just needed to have a bit more stability. Over the past year, I’ve gotten a better hang of things. It’s good to browse through the pages now and then to see how far I’ve come.
At the end of every day, I sit down and write down how it went. I state all of the important parts of my day, and I write down how much money I spent. If I want to get into the emotional aspects of my life, I get into it. If I don’t want to, I don’t. It’s usually never more than half a page.
It’s my journal, and I can do what I want. The important thing is that I’m doing it for me.