I have this beautiful leather book, soft and flexible. The cover is decorated with orange leaves in various shades. An orange leather strap wraps around the book and holds everything important in it, not letting the indexed words escape. Washi tape in various shades marks the edge of many of the pages. There are no loose papers in the book.

I laugh when I call it my “Life Book.”

My husband will ask, “Is that the correct new price for our TV service?”

“Let me check my Life Book” is my reply. It’s all there.

People in the know would call it a bullet journal, although my bullet journal is definitely not as precise and fancy as those you see if you google the term. No, mine is definitely my life journal – or it was prior to March.

Somewhere in my past, I became a collector of notebooks. On visits to the dollar spot at my local craft store, I would fall in love with cute little notebooks. You just have to buy a cute little notebook that’s only one or two dollars! Right?

While teaching, I had cute little notebooks for building staff meetings, district level meetings, district extended workshops sponsored by grants, or parent notes. Notebooks. Notebooks. Notebooks. All different. I knew what each one was for. It was fun.

The school year would end. Half the notebook would be empty. I hate raggedy notebooks left after tearing out pages, don’t you?

Survey – which is worse? Tearing out pages from a double spiral ring notebook and having that mess stuck in the spirals OR tearing pages out of a bound notebook and have torn edges that may or may not cause other pages to come loose?

Sorry, I digress.

At some point at home I had notebooks (cute of course) with notes of conversations with the cell phone company with whom I had argued about rising rates. You see, as do many parents of my age, I carry two of my three children on my plan because it’s cheaper. For whom you might ask???

I don’t know what your cable/satellite service is like in your area, but here pricing changes frequently based on three month or six month “rebates” to decrease the price for a period of time. Darn. They all ended at the same time. Why is this month’s bill $40 more than last months bill? I can skim through a notebook and tell you. Ahh, that increase is not supposed to happen until next month. I’ll call the retention department with notes in hand to present my case.

Then, of course, there’s my writing notebooks. Those are usually composition books with a cute cover constructed from remnants of my scrapbooking days. I have writing notebooks in which I actually take notes at workshops, those that hold random writing thoughts, and one with details about people I interviewed for my book.

Then, one day, after retirement and Pinterest addiction, I discovered the Bullet Journal.

Everything. Is. In. One. Place.

It’s 2016. I began my adventure into the Bullet Journal. I just tiptoed in at first, drawing from my stash of empty books.

Now, I keep my notes from author meetings separate but everything else is in my bullet journal. It’s a new world for disorganized me. What did the cell phone company tell me? It’s in the bullet journal. What variety of snow peas did I plant and when did they pop up? It’s in there.

What are potential blog post topics?

What do I need to remember to do next January? No tickler file for me, just a bullet journal future log. There are no lost pieces of paper with people’s phone numbers or birthdays. If it needs to be written or can be written, it is in the journal. That means I can go back and find it!

My notebook is not thin. It’s over two hundred sheets of paper, transferring into four hundred numbered pages. While some journalers believe you should begin a new book each January, I keep mine going until it’s full. Why transfer future information until necessary? Gone are the days of many notebooks for me.

(I actually shouldn’t say that as I have two boxes of unused notebooks in a closet. They make great little gifts, by the way.)

My current journal started the week of May 21, 2018. Each week’s events covers two pages normally. This journal has carried me through conversations with university IT people when I got set up to teach each fall. It helped my daughter’s wedding last spring become a reality. Pages are numbered, topics are indexed, and color coded tape on the edges helps me find frequently used pages.

I knew my journal would run out of pages before summer, so I began searching for a replacement, figuring it would be a good gift for my March birthday. I wanted another 400-page journal that would last two years.  I was excited to get a beautiful journal with purple flowers by the same manufacturer.

Hmm. Somewhere around the end of March, my journal got set on a side table, not to be opened for months. My new journal sits in a drawer.

My life has been unplanned during the pandemic and needs a little tidying up.

Last week I decided it is time to resurrect my Bullet Journal.