bullet journaling and other good newses

i haven't disappeared, i've just been busy with non-art related schtuff. why? ever since upgrading to windows 10 my office 365 suite has NOT worked. i've repaired, reinstalled, and hot fixed until i was blue in the face, and i still can not get past an error having to do with the product key. this left me able to view the files but completely unable to even copy and paste content from my word files to e-mails. microsoft has been no help whatsoever on a product, that mind you, i paid monthly for.

all this has put me very far behind at work.

so, i gave up. i uninstalled office 365 and all components from my system and just opted to install open office and voila! problems solved!

most of this week has been spent playing a game of catch up as i update and reorganize all my work related pdfs and word files and send them out to my wine tasting hosts. now that this is all caught up i have time for other stuff again and i am about to get extremely busy!

today is october 1st. happy fall ya'll!

halloween is right around the corner, with thanksgiving and christmas hot on it's tail. for the first time in a couple years i am actually looking forward to the holiday season and looking forward to a bright and shiny 2016!

on the first day of (almost) every month i invest a little time organizing my bullet journal. i confess, the past month was an odd blur and my journal caught very little of it. what was caught was mostly the negativity i needed to purge from my brain. i don't know about most people, but for myself, it seems that i only write in my journal when things are going badly. i write the bad things down to get them out of my head. it seems to be one of the most effective ways for me to release negativity and move on. the end result, though, is a journal filled with bad. my children will inherit my journals when i am gone, do i really want them to read nothing but the bad stuff in them? no, they aren't meant for that. they are intended to collect everything from day-to-day life to memories of things we do together to memorable things my children do or say. i've been terrible about a number of other habits as well, which led me to come up with a plan of action to help track positive goals.
we'll see how it goes!

first up, i didn't get to do a woyww yesterday as i was knee deep in word files. i should have, it wouldn't have taken that long but i procrastinated until the day was gone. so here's a picture of this weeks workspace.

and on to the journal...

this is my normal 1st of the month spread. month's events at a glance on the left and a running to do list on the right that holds the larger to-do tasks, normally not the daily ones. this is list i keep running constantly and will migrate the items i do not get done into the next months list. 

next is the first day of the month entry (today) on the left and my new goals page on the right. i totally messed this one up this morning. i sat down to migrate information and hopped right in to the first days entry and THEN realized i had planned to make the goals page. after some searching on pinterest i found the idea again (i didn't pin it when i should have and had to research it). my ocd wants me to tear the page out and reorder them, but i can't do that in this journal as it is a hardcover bound moleskin. this is my very first bullet journal, i've been working in it since june and it definitely is a work in progress as some of the ideas on pinterest work for me and some do not. it has also been a lesson in letting things be because i have had this awful "don't like it, tear it out and rewrite it" mindset since middle school. i can clearly remember writing and re-writing my notes over and over again. in this journal, i have to let things be, i can't go tearing out pages. i could creatively cover them up in a number of ways if i wished but the rule has been to leave things alone even if i hate them since i started. i also refuse to use any sort of pain in this journal at this point.

 

and finally, i had to rework my key because i added some new icons that i hope will be of use. again, we'll see. some of the old ones i had on the previous key were virtually useless and had to be removed.

here is the index page so you can see what kind of things i keep track of. any and all empty pages are used for sketches which haven't been putting in the index. since i only recently returned to art there are not a lot of pages of sketches yet.

 

use my pinterest board as a launch point to learning more about bullet journals.


late last night i got the most wonderful e-mail! i recently started following tangie baxter because i love her artwork. i was so excited when i read that she was having a crew call to find people to help her with her online classes. i'm still very much a novice at art journaling, sketching, and painting but i knew this would be a great opportunity for me to have something creative to spend some time on, learn a great number of things, and network with some very creative people. so i put myself out there and filled out her application and i was so stoked last night to get this e-mail!

i am SO excited! i can not wait to jump in and start helping and learning!  

and in honor of throwback thursday, i'll leave you with one of my very first pages from lifebook 2012.