Bullet journal

I have a problem with planners. I'm addicted to the researching and purchasing of planners of all varieties. However, I have a tendency to fall off the planner bandwagon after approximately 2.3 months, wherein the new, shiny planner begins to gather dust. And cobwebs.

You see, I love, love, LUV planners -- the design, the organization, the eternal hope that I will get my stuff together and manage my days seamlessly and with a touch of panache. But the particular, organized parts of me have an ongoing battle with a free-spirited side that wants to run with wild abandon, to be UNENCUMBERED, to suck the marrow out of life. You know, the part of me that wants to watch Netflix for the better part of the day.

At the beginning of 2016, I decided to try the bullet journal because it speaks to organization and precision AND to creativity and free-thinking. Also, it encourages doodling, writing, and using really cool pens.

Here are the main ideas of bullet journaling:

1. It's customizable. It's essentially a notebook organized by what you WANT to record. It might be a calendar, a journal, or a compilation of to-do lists. Mine is all of those things at once.
2. The typical bullet journal contains a table of contents, numbered pages, and daily logs. But the possibilities are limitless. I've seen habit trackers, exercise trackers, budgeting pages, wish lists, and so much more.
3. It's all done in a simple, blank (or lined) notebook. The most often recommended notebook for bullet journaling is the Leuchtturn 1917. It has a dotted grid that's helpful for headers and bulleted lists. I'm currently using the Midori MD notebook because I happened to have one on hand. It also has a grid pattern, and it's worked exceptionally well. For pens, I'm using the Staedler Triplus Fineliner.

I started with a long perusal of Boho Berry's website. She's a bullet journal guru. Start here for a quick overview. (Or try this post for more ideas.)

There are thousands of bullet journal modules -- meaning lists and pages you could include. Type "bullet journal" into the search bar of Pinterest and you'll see what I'm talking about. Here are the pages that I'm loving at the moment:

1. Monthly calendar and goals.

2. Monthly gratitude log. I write two things each day that I'm grateful for.

3. Daily task log: In my daily log I write what I want to accomplish that day as well as appointments or other necessary tasks. At the end of the day, I review the daily log and try to write at least a few sentences about how the day went, special happenings, funny moments. In this way, the log becomes more of a journal. (And sometimes I don't journal. AND THAT'S OKAY TOO.)

I really like the flexibility of the journal. If I miss a few days or a week, I don't have blank days in my planner -- I just start up on the page I left off. In the front of my journal I have a running list of books I want to read, yearly goals, and a table of contents. Essentially, any time you want to include a list or special module, just plug it in and indicate the number in your table of contents. The journal can expand and shrink based on your planning needs of the moment.

Have any of you done a bullet journal? Any special pages that work well for you?

One second, every day

I'm probably late to the party on this one but one of my favorite apps lately is 1 Second Everyday*, a phone app that helps you take little video snippets of your life and stitch them together chronologically to make a movie. (If you saw the movie Chef, the son used this app in making the movie of his dad's food truck.) 

You might be thinking that the last thing you need is another app or reason to take more photos/movies but I promise this one is easy peasy. No need to think up cleverly worded posts, no fiddling with things at the time you're filming, no need to pose or think about likes or followers. Just take a few frames of video now and then (the more candid and random the better) and later (you don't even have to do it that day) you choose which clip to represent the day and upload it to the app. There's something magical about capturing the lovely, mundane everyday moments as they fly by--and then seeing them in one cohesive movie.

You can also create other projects not based on the one-a-day format. When we went away this long Easter weekend (Australia takes a four-day holiday), I decided to do one to remember our time together:

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• 1SE founder Cesar Kuriyama's TED talk
• His 1 Second Everyday video from Age 30
• A sampling of other 1SE movies

*not a sponsored post, I just love to spread the joy

Marriage questions

Yesterday's New York Times article "13 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married" poses some terrific questions for couples to ask each other--either before marriage or in the midst of one. (As Robert Scuka reminds us in the article, "If you don't deal with an issue before marriage, you deal with it while you're married.") They're all great questions but here's a sampling:

• Did your family throw plates, calmly discuss issues or silently shut down when disagreements arose?
• What's the most you would be willing to spend on a car, a couch, shoes?
• Can you deal with my doing things without you?
• Do you know all the ways I say "I love you"?
• How do you see us 10 years from now?

I would add a few more:

• How important are holidays and gestures (gifts, birthdays, etc.) to you?
• Are you an upholder, a questioner, or an obliger? 
• How did your parents/family divide the household/family work? Do you expect it will be the same with us or different?
• Will you love me like Calvin loves Alice?

Which brings me to my Throwback Thursday selection: If you're a long-time reader, you'll remember that one of my lodestar couples is Calvin and Alice Trillin, whose 35-year marriage was the subject of his love letter/elegy of a book About Alice as well as the topic of many of Calvin Trillin's essays through the years.  I'm not the only one who has a Trillin marriage crush. Calvin writes of the many condolence letters he received from readers after Alice's death:

"[I]n the weeks after she died I was touched by their letters. They might not have known her but they knew how I felt about her...I got a lot of letters like the one from a young woman in New York who wrote that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"

Original post: Like Calvin and Alice

Edited to add some more great questions suggested by readers:

How willing are you to make sacrifices for each other? How messy/tidy are you and what degree of tolerance do you have for a change in your style? How will you divide the chores, tasks, etc.? What percentage of your time do you want to be in solitude? with one other person? with groups? What activities are really important for you to do with me and which ones can we do on our own/don't need (or have to have) our spouse to do with us? How much emotion do you each attach to money and its management?  "What is money for?" 

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Okay, friends, what questions would you add to the list? (And who are your lodestar couples?)

Wedding Wednesday

photo via swportraits

Annie and I, in all of our wedding excitement, have decided to institute a 'Wedding Wednesday' post for the next little bit as we share our our decisions, wants, needs, successes, and travails on the road to planning weddings for our eldest daughters. We both have all of the key players in place: venue, invites, caterer, florist, photographer, and so forth. For myself, I'm a little jittery about it all coming together day of. I'll let you know how that works out!

My first piece of advice? Use a google doc as a planner!

Jordan downloaded a pre-made, wedding planner template and then personalized it for her specific needs. It's been invaluable for gathering addresses and estimating numbers -- how many invites to order, how many people to feed, how big the venue should be. I probably didn't use the google doc quite as effectively as I could have, but the vision is to enter possible vendors (with websites and phone numbers) so everyone involved can have access to the pertinent information. Obviously, you can share the doc with as many people as you'd like.

Here's a list of wedding planner templates. We used the first one: "Wedding - All in One Wedding Planner." Jordan set up the particulars and named the document "Blush and Bashful," which, of course, made my Steel Magnolia heart so very happy.

I made a bed!

A few months ago I posted about our preparations for Thanksgiving week, which included moving out Parker's bunkbeds and fashioning a good old DIY bed frame. But I clean forgot to post any after pictures. And I'm just positive that some of you have been waiting with baited breath to see how this DIY bed turned out. Am I right?

I neglected to take any before photos, but here's one I snapped with my phone back in August when we were cleaning out PJ's drawers and closet in preparation for the new school year. Also, I offer this picture because I want to be authentic and show you how we really live. Yes, there is a parka and santa hat on the floor in August. In Texas. The end.

Out went the old (except for the carpet, which I would really, really like to see leave the premises) and in came the new. Behold.

We built the queen-sized bed frame for right around $50 -- just builder grade pine and stain and polyurethane (plans found here). Honestly, you really only need a drill, some clamps, and possibly a sander. Sterling cut our boards to length at home, but you could easily have Home Depot cut them for you. We opted not to build the headboard the same weekend because of time constraints, and I'm not certain I even want it. We will live with the platform bed for a while and see how we like it.

I started a small collection of Parker's race numbers. Next season we can continue to add on. Instant (and free) art. Holla!

Everything is fresh and clean and feeling much more age appropriate. One other note -- Parker had been asking for a Tempurpedic mattress for some time prior to the room redo. We settled on a more budget-friendly mattress (of the memory foam variety), and it's been a huge hit. We bought ours from a local mattress store, but they are available all over the Internet.

A few good gems

Merry weekend to you! It's a rainy early fall day here in Canberra; these are the weeks when I feel like our weather here overlaps with the early spring weather my family is experiencing in the  northern hemisphere. It's like we meet and high-five each other as we pass toward opposite seasons.  Wherever you are reading this, I hope it's a lovely, refilling weekend for you!

painting by Erin Fitzhugh Gregory

First a few good gems to take you into the weekend:

I was blown away by this article about the amazing Thread volunteer mentor program--unconditional, round-the-clock community support for TEN YEARS to struggling students identified in 9th grade. Fascinating!

Speaking of mentors, I learned from and enjoyed Courtney Martin's essay on the art of being mentored. 

On dealing with imposter syndrome. So good. (I'm oddly relieved to learn that nearly everyone suffers from this now and then. The Imposter Society.)

This Mexican Tortilla Casserole (via Cup of Jo)  is so good and super easy--I've taken it to potluck dinners and served it to guests here with either this vegetarian version or adapting it to include shredded chicken. 

Don't you love these fabulous, space-saving bunk nooks via Style Me Pretty? Sign me up!

photo by Jana Carson

Fun, simple birthday traditions for tweens and teens. 

To file under the category of it's never too late to do what you want to do, this week 90-year-old Colette Bourlier got her PhD in geography after 30 years. She wrote all 400 pages by hand!  Go Colette! ("I am old. Now I just want to relax" she said.)

Lastly, I found this a really interesting podcast interview (on Design Matters) with Humans of New York founder Brandon Stanton:

Debbie talks to photographer Brandon Stanton about his ongoing project "Humans of New York" and why total strangers open up to him.

Happy weekending!

Mapping what's next: Questions to ask

Lately I feel a bit like I'm sitting at the far edge of the map I've created for the last 20+ years of my life. The old map and globe makers supposedly used to say (or not) about the mysteries beyond the border "here be dragons." For me, there aren't dragons, really, just a few unknown seas and a considerable amount of horizon. As Dante said at the beginning of his masterpiece Inferno "Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, For the straight forward pathway had been lost."  

Until now, the life I've pieced together has been filled with my own projects and pursuits and, at the same time, considerably oriented in time and energy around the raising of a family. Two things happen this year that will rock that geography : (1) Sam will finish high school and set off, ending my stint as a resident in-house mother, and (2) we will move back to the states to a place yet to be determined. 

[Watch me get all themey with this map metaphor: For years I've navigated the Cape of Good Naps, weathered the tantrum tempests, the Sea of Puberty, and the Straits of Discipline. I've helped build new boats, furnished them with the anchors and navigation systems that have worked for us, and launched our small fleet.]  So: fresh start. Clean slate. Edge of the map. The question that's been on my mind lately is what's next? who do I want to be for the rest of (or at least next part of) my life?

It's a theme I hear frequently from my friends and our readers; whether or not they have been working full time, part time, or staying at home, this transition is fascinating and altering and opens up possibilities with whole new landscapes to navigate. I'm not just talking vocation here--though that could certainly be part of it--also pursuits and hobbies, things to learn, places to visit, projects to take on, contributions to make.  

Here's one step I recently took toward figuring these things out, an exercise at the intersection of first, know thyself and when in doubt, make a list. Earlier this year on a night when G and Sam were on a camping trip, I sat down with my notebooks spread out on the bed and started to sort out my thoughts on this whole what's next situation. I made long lists answering a host of questions to start a conversation with myself (planning + lists = my happy place).

Maybe you know exactly what's next for you. If so, high five and enjoy your fantastic map!  If, like me, you're also starting to dream/scheme/imagine/anticipate what might be next for you, here's your gentle, borderland-dwelling assignment: Answer these questions for yourself, with compassion and honesty about who you are and who you want to be. Don't stop too long to analyze as you write, just nudge all of those ideas to go mingle together on the lists.  (Bonus: These could work for helping older kids and young adults figure out what's next for them, too): 

What do I love doing?

What do I love thinking about/talking about? 

What/whom do I envy? (This can be an illuminating insight. If you feel jealous of what someone does, it's probably because it's something you wish you could do!)

What am I good at/do people say I do well? 

In what kinds of settings would those things be useful, fun, or welcome?

What would I like to still improve?

What will I let go trying to improve and just accept/embrace/learn to love about myself? 

What do I typically avoid or try to delay doing?

What might I love (given some experience/time/mentoring)?

What do I want my life to include more of/be known for?

Who are my heroes, mentors + cool people to emulate? What do they have in common?

What attributes and dreams did I used to have that I'd like to recapture (i.e., will the original version of Annie please stand up?) 

What do you think--any questions you'd add to these? I'd love to hear from any of you who are mulling over the what's next question--feel free to chime in here or email me.  I'll be back to chat about further what's next steps in future posts.