Portfolio - Feature Story: "Behind the Bullet Journal"
Behind the Bullet Journal
Crisp, white dotted-grid pages embellished with carefully printed to-do lists, weekly spreads and habit trackers sit inside 21-year-old Kayla Hathaway’s bullet journal. Sprawled on a two-page spread are large bold letters that spell out “K-A-Y-L-A-’-S B-U-L-L-E-T.” It took her three hours to carefully sketch the Serif fonts and then fill them in with black ink. Lately, she’s been playing around with sketches of skulls and poppies. When writing things down, Hathaway uses a Zebra Sarasa 0.3 mm pen. For her December theme, she’s thinking outer space.
Hathaway, an Asian studies major at LBSU, has been bullet journaling since June 2017, hopping on the bandwagon of this trendy way to keep a planner, which allows the personalization of blank pages (often gridded) through logging and art. The trend picked up on digital platforms, such as Pinterest and Instagram, where bullet journalists shared their creations with others.
As a result, the essence of the bullet journal’s purpose, which is to be a productive and reflective tool for one to accomplish personal goals, has at times been lost.
“At first, I kind of sat back and I was deeply honored, flattered,” Ryder Carroll, the creator of the bullet journaling system, said about the public’s response.
Carroll found it wonderful that people could express their creativity through the bullet journal.
“For them, making the book significantly more elaborate was their way of connecting with what mattered to them,” he said. “You know, maybe they lived really uncreative lives and this is like the one place they can unwind [and] explore their creativity in some way. Maybe it’s through lettering or illustration. It’s also a way for them to declutter their mind and tackle their anxiety.”
However, Carroll is concerned about one thing. He noticed how the elaborate designs have prevented individuals from bullet journaling because they don’t feel up to par in their creative abilities.
“They [new bullet journalists] start to mimic what they see, and when they fall short, they beat themselves up and that’s really not the point,” he said.
"The practice is more along the lines of taking a step back [and] figuring out what is meaningful to you," Ryder Carroll said.
Hathaway can vouch for this because she too found herself comparing her art to that of popular bullet journalists.
“She [Feebujo] gets paid to do stuff,” Hathaway said about the popular figure who works with Leitrim, a bullet journal company. “She just had her art on the cover of a limited edition book and I’m like, ‘Well, I’m never going to get there and that’s really upsetting.’”
Hathaway said to be wary of this, yet also realize that looking up to popular bullet journalists is not necessarily wrong if the intention is to be inspired to improve one’s bullet journal.
Carroll shared that the bullet journal is meant to evolve with the person who is using it, to accommodate the person’s needs and focus on what matters to them.
In an attempt to take back the narrative, Carroll released a book this year called “The Bullet Journal Method.” He explained that the book is comprised of two parts: the “system” and the “practice.”
The system is how bullet journaling sets out to help a person be more productive and get things done, Carroll said.
“The practice is more along the lines of taking a step back [and] figuring out what is meaningful to you,” Carroll added. “You know, checking in with yourself, getting into the habit of introspection and in that process essentially we start to identify the things that are meaningful to us. The things that matter.”
Carroll launched his website several years ago to share the system with the public. It was born out of his being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder as a child. Growing up, it was difficult for him to focus and be productive.
“There weren’t a lot of resources available to me,” he said. “So, I had to develop my own and over time I started figuring out tricks and tactics that allowed me to become more focused and more productive.”
Now hundreds, even thousands, of individuals have utilized the system to improve their lives.
"Realistically, a good bullet journal is good if it's useful," Kayla Hathaway said. "Like, it doesn't have to be artsy."
For Hathaway, bullet journaling has kept her productive academically.
“It’s helped me with organization,” she continued. “Keeping on track with homework assignments.”
In the beginning of the semester, she condensed her class syllabi into one page each. She found it convenient to have all the important dates and projects all in one place as opposed to a folder where things can go missing.
Hathaway’s personal system for bullet journaling has evolved from creating spreads on a monthly basis to now on a daily basis.
Christy Nguyen, an animation major at LBSU, also bullet journals. Unlike Hathaway, she went from weekly spreads to bi-weekly/monthly spreads because her style of bullet journaling does not consist of extra features like habit tracking. She said she simply sets the dates and makes bullet points.
Despite her studying animation, Nguyen does not like the bullet journal for the art. For her, it’s the fact that it looks complete as opposed to a regular planner that hardly ever gets filled when it fails to accommodate her personal needs.
“You know, there’s that satisfactory feeling of looking through your whole bullet journal, like [seeing] what you’ve done so far,” Nguyen said.
When it comes down to it, Hathaway agrees that it isn’t the aesthetics that ultimately count.
“Realistically, a good bullet journal is good if it’s useful,” Hathaway said. “Like, it doesn’t need to be artsy.”
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