Bujo

Bujo. It sounds like a kind of jewel. Give it a Romance language accent, it’s rather elegant, mysterious. In fact, it stands for “bullet journal.” 

I mentioned in my Begonia post of last month that I had spilled fruit shake on my datebook. This is a relative bummer in the lives of those who keep paper datebooks. For me, it resulted in the destruction of anything that might be called “control” and “organization.” March to April has been a sh*t show, chaos barely held at bay as I have attempted to integrate the joys of bullet journaling into my life. It has taken a month and five days to complete, if where I am today can be called complete.

It began March 13th, an obsessive search to replace my datebook, which hadn’t been Golidlocks-just-right anyway. What had been so perfect back in November of 2023 turned out to be meh. I didn’t recognize the depths of its meh-ness until the fruit shake landed on it, and rather than buy a repeat of what I had had, I decided to agree with the “How to ADHD” woman and try out the bu. jo. system.

The word “system” held an appeal. I need systems. And the “How to ADHD” woman explained how a bujo is exactly what I need. I can adapt the bu. jo. to my brain, not the other way around. I felt empowered, organized just thinking about it! I dove into the learning curve of “how to bu. jo.”

The word “obsession” comes to mind. Every day, for hours, I was looking at videos. Do you know how many millions of YouTube videos there are depicting different people’s takes on and creativity around bu.jos? I would innocently start a “quick” search for a bu. jo. and end up two hours later unable to stop myself, even when I said out loud, “TORY! You are acting crazy. Stop. Turn away.” Instead, I’d click just one more link to one more YouTube video of someone creating beautiful, organized datebooks with drawings and little stickers and straight lines without a ruler…so not me. I draw a line and it’s not all that straight and maybe not in the exact center of the page and so it sits there, radiating smugness at its just-off-the-centeredness. 

I used a lot of white out this month.

But the idea of a bujo…it really did match my brain. It gave me form and structure in a way that most executive functioning planners don’t. I knew there’d be a learning curve, but everything is a learning curve these days, right? And, significantly, I learned that there is a difference between To Dos and Projects and Habits-to-be-nurtured in this let’s-improve-ourselves-because-we-are-so-imperfect society. Usually, they all rate Important! Urgent! on my task list…s.

In the process of all this education, I ordered a journal that would be transformed into my bu. jo. Three journals, actually. One of which is vegan.

Unfortunately, the pages weren’t numbered. And it was too small. I need psychological space to dump my brain into. The Leuchtturm1917 does have numbers. But it had lines, not dots.

At which discovery, I shifted my research to stencils because, of course, I needed stencils. To make the bullets perfectly round. And the hearts (fun events!) and stars (important!). Numbers and letters… The stencils arrived made of plastic, not metal, but think of the carbon footprint if I returned them…and they’d probably end up in a landfill. 

Returning to the dotted pages—not lined—of the third journal: the dots theoretically help with the counting to the middle of the page so as to be in the exact middle when one divides up the pages into months or weeks. Days. That was a challenge to my patience because I kept miscounting; the dots were too small. And my rulers didn’t seem very ruling. 

By the time all my “tools” arrived, I was deep into Ryder Carrol YouTubes. I had gone to the pro, he who started the damned bujos, thereby causing—did I mention—millions of YouTube videos to be created by creatives who are not me. I have my own special, oh, so special brain. Thus, three attempts at a bu-fricking-jo in, I ordered a Happy Planner. Undated…

It took forever to arrive. Life was falling apart with no datebook and three bullet journals that I had to keep track of. Panic and chaos and I had the eureka moment that I need to keep my bullets separate from my journaling, and my datebook had to take precedence because what was going on was not organized, in control, or calm. 

I tried to blame Mercury, who was in retrograde. And then the sun and moon, who had a nice little balancing act in the midst of all this, thereby creating calm and balance, but it didn’t seem to be permeating down to the world, nor me.

Have you had it with bujos? So have I. The Happy Planner has arrived and…it makes me happy. I am still moving into it. It’s like moving the furniture and papers around in my office. So satisfactory and organized. The only problem? Now I have to figure out what it is I have been avoiding all this time. What’s percolating under all the obsession and distraction?