It’s a new year! 🎉

Last year I started to consistently use a planner, and bought myself a premade planner with my name customized on the cover. It was going pretty well for a while until I started to follow more planner and bullet journaling communities on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. I saw all the fun creative spreads people made and wanted to do my own instead of using the same premade layout every week! Unfortunately I felt that I should finish up the premade planner I got, so I got myself a dot grid journal and satisfied myself with making a few collections in it until I could switch over completely.

Now it’s the new year and I’m so excited that I’ve switched over to making my own planner spreads! It’s been a lot of fun planning out themes and ways to use all my stickers and washi tape in my yearly, monthlies, weeklies, and collections.

However now I’ve got yet another dilemma – the dot grid journal I had bought was a Leuchtturm1917. I had done some initial research and it was suggested in some of the communities I followed. As I used it more though, I’ve found that there is a lot of ghosting from the pens and markers I use, and it really bothers me ☹️ Also the paper is a cream color that comes out very yellow in photos. So I did more research this time and found this comparison chart, and now I really want an Archer and Olive journal! They’re a bit expensive, but I would love to be able to use my watercolor markers in it. Sadly I still have a lot of my current journal to use up – I’m still deciding if I want to buy an Archer and Olive journal now to motivate myself to use up the current one faster or wait. I’m just worried that if I get one now, I’ll give up on the current one and waste the rest of it!

In August I had posted that I was going to start specifying a specific project type per day to make sure I don’t get pigeonholed – for instance, Wednesday was for crafts and Thursday was for games and reading. Unfortunately that ended up making me stressed out whenever something altered the schedule, whether it be me feeling too tired to do a technical project on its day or some event coming up preventing me from doing anything at all another day. I’ve now switched to just listing out the project types on my weekly without assigning them to days, leaving myself room to fit them in however they work out. (I probably should have done that in the first place!)

This month has been really busy, so it was perfect timing to be able to do my own layouts. Highlights included a trip to Vegas with friends, two Penguins games, and the NHL Fan Fair at the All Star Weekend 🐧🐧