Lying in bed late one evening (6:30), Eliza tells me she wants something from Santa. She describes it as a “book case,” which I eventually realize means a hard book cover, and in between the back and front are a lot of blank pages. She calls them “empty pieces of paper.” She tells me how she will write something or draw something every day — whatever is on her mind that day — until she is a grownup and the book is full. I get pulled along in her inventive vision, as if she is the first person who has ever thought of this exquisite form of documentation.
“Can I write a letter to Santa?” she asks.
“In the morning,” I tell her.
“But how will I describe what I mean?” she worries.
Listening to my child invent the idea of a diary is pretty great. I actually still have my first diary from when I was about eight. It’s a small, thin book covered in a greenish fabric of a certain style that, when I was growing up in the 80s, we might have called Oriental. It had parchment-thin lined pages with arboreal borders, in which I wrote about the time our golden retriever was run over by a car on the day of my ballet recital and how I had a crush on Everett Sweet, until he teased me for wearing my lazy eye patch.
I have boxes and boxes of old journals spanning almost my entire life.
Do I still journal? Well, you are reading it right now.
But I also bullet journal, which is one of the ways this introvert Virgo creative relaxes. I am sure you’ve heard of bullet journaling; perhaps you do it yourself. It’s one of those things where there’s a system and loose “rules,” but it’s really all about making it your own. I recently posted about this on Facebook and Instagram, and at the risk of beating a dead horse, am going to rave again here about how much I love bullet journaling — sort of like an amalgam of journaling and calendaring and to-do listing and scrapbooking.
You can really use bullet journaling in any way you want, but for ideas, I always recommend this video as a good starting point. I use it for:
-
Setting annual, monthly, and weekly goals
-
Tracking tasks and projects
-
Making lists and lists and lists and lists and lists
-
Recording important things that happened
-
Dilettante typography doodling
The best part of bullet journaling for me is that it’s analog. In an era and specifically a year when every single thing seems to happen on a screen, this does not. I crawl into bed (my favorite time of day), crack open my physical bullet journal, and doodle or scrawl or track the day away. Then I read. Which….
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What I’m reading:
On the recommendation of several people I trust I indulged in a young adult novel: The Hate You Give. This one is a must-read for all white adults.
Some good pulpy cult stuff: Everywhere I Went, They Went With Me, Because They Were on My Phone”: Inside the Always Online, All-Consuming World of Twin Flames Universe
And some real feel-good stuff: My Pandemic Cat Had a Secret
It’s that time of year: Why Pantone Selected Not One But Two Colors of the Year for 2021 For the record, I hate the Pantone color(s) of the year choice, as usual.
What I’m listening to:
It’s that time of year when Spotify’s algorithms are feeding me back a list of the songs I have listened to most in 2020, causing me to listen to them some more, in an infinite loop of my own personal taste. Top ten:
What I’m watching:
I will be watching The Crown until at least 2023 at this rate, but also, for movie night last week, watched a pretty decent kids movie called Klaus.
Sidebar — can anyone recommend a version of Wind in the Willows as a movie?
