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razielimJS4: "Here or in your space, share your current setup in as much or as little detail as you're comfortable with. Feel free to use pictures or describe it in words!"
My setup is incredibly minimal this year!!
The main reason I switched from Hobonichi to a blank dot grid this year was actually that I've been painting SO MUCH that the style of planning/journaling I did while I had a 9-to-5 job and while I was recovering from brain injury just wasn't working for me any more. It was too much work!! I spent basically all of 2021 trying to make it work, in some way shape or form, but it wouldn't.
(The bonus reason for the switch is that I could make my monthly pages according to zodiac season rather than calendar days. My 2022 planner starts on the winter solstice rather than Jan 1st, and today I'm setting up the next monthly page for Pisces season.)
Here's some recent days. I basically just make task lists, break down big tasks into smaller ones, and write down what actually happened either in addition to my plans, or what happened instead of my plans if I never wrote any down.
The washi boxes are actually a very recent innovation (literally this week, though you can see it starting to evolve last week) because before that I was pretty unhappy with how loose and unstructured everything was. There was too much room on a page for just two days' worth of tasks, but four days per page felt cramped since the dot grid is huge (5mm). And since the paper is so dark it was difficult to visually distinguish between areas on the page. The washi takes up a lot of space and makes it very easy to focus on one day at a time! I used washi for breaks or decoration before, but this actually feels very functional and vital.
I'm pretty consistent now after a month and a half of experimenting. A week is two spreads divided evenly into eight sections (eighth one is at the beginning, for weekly goals). It'sa little weird because I'm killing so much space that I wouldn't know where to put research notes if I needed to start doing that again, but it works for now.
I do still intend to go back to Hobonichi next year because it's honestly so much easier to keep things organized and plan ahead when dates are prefilled for me, but now that I've gotten a feel for just how little I really NEED to write out on a daily basis to stay on track, I think I'll be a lot gentler with myself when I go back to it. For some context, this is how much I used to fill EVERY DAY of my 2019-2021 planners:
And I kept pressuring myself to do that long after I stopped having sufficient time to do so. Plus filling out weekly pages, monthly pages, copying quotes into my astrological planner, etc.
Looking back on these pages and pages of notes, philosophy, research, brainstorming, and theorizing after adapting to freeform planning this year, I've had to a accept that my life is just different nowadays, I don't prioritize my time the same way, and that's not only okay, it's GREAT.
My setup is incredibly minimal this year!!
The main reason I switched from Hobonichi to a blank dot grid this year was actually that I've been painting SO MUCH that the style of planning/journaling I did while I had a 9-to-5 job and while I was recovering from brain injury just wasn't working for me any more. It was too much work!! I spent basically all of 2021 trying to make it work, in some way shape or form, but it wouldn't.
(The bonus reason for the switch is that I could make my monthly pages according to zodiac season rather than calendar days. My 2022 planner starts on the winter solstice rather than Jan 1st, and today I'm setting up the next monthly page for Pisces season.)
Here's some recent days. I basically just make task lists, break down big tasks into smaller ones, and write down what actually happened either in addition to my plans, or what happened instead of my plans if I never wrote any down.
The washi boxes are actually a very recent innovation (literally this week, though you can see it starting to evolve last week) because before that I was pretty unhappy with how loose and unstructured everything was. There was too much room on a page for just two days' worth of tasks, but four days per page felt cramped since the dot grid is huge (5mm). And since the paper is so dark it was difficult to visually distinguish between areas on the page. The washi takes up a lot of space and makes it very easy to focus on one day at a time! I used washi for breaks or decoration before, but this actually feels very functional and vital.
I'm pretty consistent now after a month and a half of experimenting. A week is two spreads divided evenly into eight sections (eighth one is at the beginning, for weekly goals). It'sa little weird because I'm killing so much space that I wouldn't know where to put research notes if I needed to start doing that again, but it works for now.
I do still intend to go back to Hobonichi next year because it's honestly so much easier to keep things organized and plan ahead when dates are prefilled for me, but now that I've gotten a feel for just how little I really NEED to write out on a daily basis to stay on track, I think I'll be a lot gentler with myself when I go back to it. For some context, this is how much I used to fill EVERY DAY of my 2019-2021 planners:
And I kept pressuring myself to do that long after I stopped having sufficient time to do so. Plus filling out weekly pages, monthly pages, copying quotes into my astrological planner, etc.
Looking back on these pages and pages of notes, philosophy, research, brainstorming, and theorizing after adapting to freeform planning this year, I've had to a accept that my life is just different nowadays, I don't prioritize my time the same way, and that's not only okay, it's GREAT.
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Date: 2022-02-19 00:09 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:04 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 06:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 09:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:19 (UTC)Or maybe I expect too much of myself. I have noticed a pattern that I only really feel connected to a season on the very last week of it, almost like clockwork, and maybe a week is enough. I don't have to be, you know, like, FULL LEO or whatever for 30 days straight. Maybe my body and brain know on some level that that would be insane and exhausting even if I'm enthusiastic about the possibility. It could be that the first few weeks are just a preparation for embodying those traits and clearing out all the gunk that's stoppering them. If nothing changes by the end of the year/this little calendar experiment in how I experience the seasons, then, you know, maybe that's the case.
I love making up experiments.
A LOT.I've also tracked my creative output with the moon's transits, and two years of that data also amounted to... nothing. Zero conclusions. So I'm used to some of my astrological ideas being utterly futile. It's fun to try, though!no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 10:58 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:21 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 11:38 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:28 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 11:51 (UTC)I'm amazed at how much you used to write every day, that's a lot of reflection!! Looking forward to see what the mix between the two might look like next round :D
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Date: 2022-02-19 17:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 15:16 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-19 17:21 (UTC)Razielim u r so cool
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Date: 2022-02-19 17:30 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 08:59 (UTC)I have one journal that's set up by astrological season and one set up by calendar days. I don't think I've even seen anyone else do one by astrological season before.
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Date: 2022-03-09 16:10 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-19 10:39 (UTC)it's a lot of work to set things up myself (aka too much work and I fall behind) - Something I am struggling with as well.