Hello mixers, and welcome to the second post of January!
Is this a fluke, or am I a totally new person who writes more this year?? Who knows! Stay tuned to find out.
Before we dive in, I’d love if you would consider sharing this post/newsletter to one person who you think might find it fun or interesting. I really appreciate it!
Also, sorry in advance to my mom for the bad words I say below!
After graduating college, I had zero career prospects and a whole lot of depression. I was back living at my parents’ house, the house I had grown up in, and working part-time at the nursing home my mom had worked my entire life. Things were looking super positive.
This depressing phase in my life overlapped with the immense popularity of the bullet journal. I had always loved notebooks and enjoyed the feeling of filling out and decorating my planners. I still have my high school junior and senior year planners because of all the memories they hold. I thought that getting back into the rhythm and organization of a planner would provide structure to my otherwise aimless days.
The bullet journal came with even more appeal than a standard preset planner because I could make a bullet journal entirely my own. I could create customized sections based on my goals and habits; I could separate blocks of time however worked best. Every successful woman I saw on Instagram or Twitter had a bullet journal (all aesthetically pleasing, of course), so undoubtedly a bullet journal would also help me get my shit together.
I first had to choose my canvas. I didn’t like the journals that only had dots to guide you; those were too open-ended and I wasn’t creative enough to make something structured and productive out of dots. I bought a lined planner-cum-notebook instead (glued spine, not spiral); each page had the months and days, 01-31, listed at the top. For officality and consistency, I numbered each page in the bottom outer corner myself.
Armed with a ruler and several colored gel pens, I built my bullet journal month by month. Each day was marked at the top. The first five or so lines housed two boxes: the one on the left side tracked my habits (drank water, cracked my knuckles, worked out) and the one on the right was my to-do list. Most of the page was left open for my daily plans; you can only imagine how empty most of these pages were for a semi-employed depressed girl. The last few lines of each page were where I wrote “what I’m grateful for” each day. Over that summer, the entries were pretty banal (chocolate chip cookies, boba, going to an Angels game), but sometimes they were sprinkled with real hope (job interview going well!).
The very last page of the journal, page 158, I reserved for an ongoing list of “Self-Care” items, which I could turn to when I was feeling extra depressed or unmotivated or unloved or unworthy or…. you get the idea.
Here is what 2016 me identified as “self-care:”
Have a glass of water.
Shower.
Put on some clean clothes.
Stretch your legs.
Say something to someone.
Move your body to music.
Complete a small task.
Take a selfie.
Silly entertainment.
Paint your nails.
I wrote out the numbers 11-15, leaving room to add more helpful activities in the future. I never filled them out. But honestly the first three alone just absolutely SCREAM depression, so I should have known that this list would not save my brain chemistry the way I hoped it would.
These days, I recognize that self care for me is less about activities I can do and more about my mental approach. For example, it’s easy enough for me to chill on the couch and play video games when I find myself too braindead to do anything else. I don’t force myself to work or to write or do tedious outside errands because it feels bad to force it. The issue is inside my head — I spend the whole time doing a physically relaxing thing freaking myself out that I am worthless and unproductive. I tell myself that everyone else has gone outside today, everyone else is being a real person in the world. It’s not self care if I’m not allowing it to be. When I’m outside of that headspace or when I’m giving advice to a friend, it’s clear as day to me that we need to give ourselves permission and space to relax, to not be productive beings 100% of the time. But when I am in that mood, even though I “know” all that to still be true, it’s hard to shake that I am the exception, I alone am a piece of shit for not being productive at that moment. I am obviously still working on that.
That bullet journal lasted only a few months. By that November, I had moved to New York for a big girl editorial internship and no longer had the languishing hours to dedicate to outlining and filling out a journal of my own making. Any scheduling needs were easily transferred to Google Calendar, and to-do lists moved to more easily transportable post-it notes. I quickly forgot the daily gratitude lists, although I could have used those in the years to come.
Years later, I got another planner/journal, this time customized online and printed to my specifications. Each monthly view had a space for “Monthly Goals;” a to-do list prefilled with “Pay rent,” “Pay Spectrum,” and “Pay ConEd,” with extra blank spaces; and a blank space for “Doodles.” I added two lined pages after each monthly view page for musings and notes (I am a writer, am I not), and even had my family’s birthdays printed. This journal lasted through June. I now occasionally use the remaining pages as scrap paper.
I still have the gel pens I bought for the bullet journal, though. I use the purple one to write down my engagements in the weekly desk calendar I share with Derek. We also share our Google Calendars, but there’s just no way I could ever go fully digital. The pull of paper lists and the feel of writing something down remains too strong to let go.