This blog post is a twofer! A review of both the book and the method related to the organizational phenomenon of bullet journal or "bujo".

Surprisingly the way I first hear about the Bullet Journal System was when I bought my first Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. Lechtturm 1917 company has a notebook that specifically mentioned bullet journals. So I checked out the website and various reviews.

 It's one of those productivity modules that appealed to me as it starts with the basic notebook and pen. Which--check. I like writing things out longhand. I like notebooks. I like the whole process. I also really love lists. (You can check out my ode to the to-do list here).

Bullet Journal seemed like the combination of those two loves along with the requisite anecdotes of being able to get your life in order. The website for bullet journal method may be found here: https://www.bulletjournal.com/.

The basic premise of the method is to have a notebook and pen. Using said pen, you first create an index. Within the index, you then record the pages and titles of the things you want to keep track of within the notebook. The method also advocates setting up monthly logs along wit daily logs.

If your chose notebook doesn't have numbered pages, put on that next podcast episode and number the pages yourself. You don't need a fancy notebook or specialized one. The one I'm using right now is a400-page beaut of a Moleskin. I do use fancy-colored markers and pens because that's one of my simple joys.

Suffice to say I was incorporating pieces of the system into my life and decided to read the book. The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll is a good read. It's also well set up to jump to different sections that might interest a reader or if someone wants a quick refresh on a section.

It's definitely suited to someone trying to figure out the best way to approach a new project or challenge in their life. Perfectly suited for a read before making a New Years' resolution. The reason I say this is that Carroll takes the reader through both his method of tracking and planning but also goal setting.

Others may be familiar with the techniques he talked about. I found the exercises helpful and grounding. They were excellent ways to frame my own goals and set priorities. With a more formal understanding of the method underway, I've tried the month snapshots--and I've fully embraced the adapted week schedule.

I need my week planned out. I do less the daily log so much as the daily end. It's helped keep me on track with journaling and listing out gratitude as well. Each week, I also try to write down a quick list of the events that I want to remember.

All in all--if you're feeling stuck or uninspired, you can check out very talented people's "bujo" on social media. You can also check out Carroll's website for the basics. I've also peppered this post with images from my own attempts. The book is great to understand the building blocks, along with the why, and also ways to approach your time. The whole may not be for everyone (me!) but I have to agree with Caroll's claim--there's probably something that will resonate with you.

One of the fun parts of the self-published author route is getting to learn and pick up skills that I may never have considered before. The first few goes were definitely frustrating in terms of formatting my e-book and my print book. In following along the formatting style guide for the Smashwords distribution site--it all felt easy. Familiar.

                I’m still not super good in following all the bells and whistles possible, but I’ve been using the free version of Canva to make my book covers ever since my first attempt at Moonshine (may it rest in peace) was too low resolution to use.

Canva works similarly to a lot of the design platforms I’ve experienced--you build things using the concept of layers. You can make some things transparent, overlay colors, put on text boxes. It can get frustrating, to me, in that selecting the item or layer you’re working on isn’t always super intuitive. A lot of times my covers get done when I’ve thrown my hands up in the air one too many times. But Canva is helpful in that I can create covers I’m proud of using images I’ve sourced. They may not have all the bells and whistles possible, but I’d like to think they get the job done. Plus it is actually really fun to source images and put them together in a way to convey a design or aesthetic about my book. I have covers for books that have yet to see the light of day because I found an image that worked so well with the plan. It really is fun to change font types, to change an image’s orientation on the page to look completely different.

                Because I have book e-books and print books, I also need two different versions. For e-books in particular, while I tend to upload with color, I need to make sure it looks good in greyscale as not every e-reader converts. I had one of the first Nooks from Barnes and Noble forever and that was true for me. For the print brooks, it needs front cover, it needs the spine, it needs the back cover. All useful things and all things that require thinking through how the cover will look even as you design on one large rectangle. I always start with a standard size for the print cover (Amazon’s Create Space has a template as I’m sure do others). I always have to end up adjusting it though because the actual size needed will depend on the number of pages--so I always try to keep my spine style congruent with the front and back cover so that way I don’t have to do too much adjusting. If you want a very bold, very different spine, make sure you build in time for adjusting.

                Building the cover does require images. If you’re looking to keep your price low (aka free) your best bet is to use images that you took yourself or created yourself or look for public domain pictures. I’m not an expert at copyright--so I try to make sure the site I’m on notes it as public domain and I also double check the year. The older the image the more likely it is to be in public domain.

My covers themselves have images from different places. Moonshine used a photograph I took in Ireland. Catspaw was from looking through photographs posted on Morguefile. Morguefile is a great site because it’s images that photographers have taken and then posted that are free for commercial use. I reached out to the photographer that posted the image I used in my basis for Catspaw and received permission to use it. Don’t Belong to No City had a much simpler search as maps often fall under federal agencies, many of whom also provide public domain images. The map I used was from the late 1880’s increasing the chances it would fall under public domain.

                For Middle Ground, my next book, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted the cover to be. I ended up using two images that are listed on public domain after searching Europeana. Europeana is a one-stop show to browse digital collections from libraries in the European Union. You can sort by types of permissions as well--which is really helpful.
Here are the two images I used to build my Middle Ground cover--and I also used the still life of flowers to create new blog headings to match:

Quick tip! Always make sure to save the link of where you found the image along with the creator’s name in order to give proper credit. You can find that usually in the front or back matter of any books you look at including information on who designed the cover. My books tend to list that at the front cover.

Here are the full links for the two images used above:
https://sammlungonline.mkg-hamburg.de/de/object/Kopf+mit+Heiligenschein/AB1988.336/dc00029988
https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2021672/resource_document_mauritshuis_548