Let me start this off by saying that I am one of the last people you would expect to start bullet journaling. At first, it took me a good couple of days pondering the idea and trying to figure out if I could even fit it into my schedule for the rest of the semester. However, I realized that there is a first for everything, and if I am going to go through the most chaotic month of my life, I might as well add a nice green aesthetic on top of it. Without further ado, here are the three things I learned about myself from my first month of bullet journaling.
- You Don’t Need to be doing Your Schoolwork 24/7
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “you’re in college, you should be doing your schoolwork.” What I realized in my efforts to track the amount of hours I spend staring at an online textbook about economic development is that I do in fact spend too much time staring at that textbook and taking notes. Again, you’re probably reading this paragraph thinking that I don’t have any of my priorities straight. However, I came to the conclusion that for every hour I spent trying to come up with ways in which countries can use neoliberalism to economically develop, it was also another hour of me neglecting my mental health.
I would spend hours upon hours staring at a computer screen taking notes with no breaks in between to recharge my mind and relax. I was jumping from one assignment to the next in my attempts to stay ahead of schoolwork to the point where I wasn’t taking time to make sure I was taking care of my body. I probably drank more cups of coffee a day this month than I did in the entirety of 2021. I was barely getting seven hours of sleep every night and my weekends were devoted solely to writing essays and taking more notes. Whenever I was just sitting with my friends on the off chance that we all had an hour to spare before going to our next class, I was left feeling guilty that I wasn’t spending that hour taking notes on authoritarian regimes. By the end of the month, I realized that between the essays and notes I had spent more than half of my time writing, I probably could’ve fit in a nice break to recharge, but alas, that’s a lesson learned for April.
- Saying No is NOT a Bad Thing
I will say that normally I am a pretty busy person and have gotten used to being busy. In fact, most times I don’t mind having performances lined up or hats to sew for people or a few assignments due. It keeps me busy and makes me feel pretty productive for the most part. However, what I was not used to was feeling like the universe was exploding on me for thirty-one days straight.
From taking nineteen credits (I know, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures), running a hat business, working as a freelance musician, and doing assistant stage management for a musical production, it felt like the universe decided to hand me the worst deck of cards I’d ever gotten in a semester. At first, I chalked up the number of important dates I had in my calendar section to be the result of the obligatory, unavoidable, terrible college semester that everyone seems to have. About halfway through the month though, I noticed the lines for my mood tracker hardly ever reached the smiley face I had drawn. It was that moment that made me realize my lack of smiley faces in my journal was because I had no idea how to say no.
Anyone that knows me will tell you I am a people pleaser and I hate disappointing people. However, my fear of letting others down was to the extent that I was putting those people before myself. That isn’t to say I should do a complete 180 like that episode of SpongeBob where he gets a new face that says “no”, but more so along the lines my own happiness and wellbeing becoming my number one priority. I spent one too many times crying in my car after five-hour rehearsals because of the overwhelming feeling of stress and anxiety that came with being given fifty songs to learn in less than a month.
I was unhappy in a profession that was supposed to be my life’s dream, and it was all because I didn’t know how to say no without feeling like I was disappointing another person in my life. You could imagine the feeling of relief that washed over me when I could check off all those dates on my calendar, and the bigger sense of relief when I realized that even if April doesn’t bring pretty flowers, it does bring a nice clean slate for me to go into the month with.
- It’s Okay to do Things for Yourself
Remember the number of to-dos I listed off in the last paragraph? Only one of those to-dos was something I did because I truly wanted to: assistant stage managing. Now, my mom would tell you I brought half of the chaos upon myself by agreeing to doing so many things and even though she is right to an extent, most of those things were not because I truly wanted to. Throughout my entire life I’ve always felt obligated to do things for other people out of fear of disappointing them, to the point where I was never really doing anything that I first and foremost wanted to do.
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with music for the longest time because I always found myself doing performances because I thought I was obligated to do them, not because I enjoyed the music I would be playing. It wasn’t until I did assistant stage managing for a musical that I realized I was choosing something for myself for the first time. I never really pictured myself being on the tech side of theater considering the fact that I am a musician, but I had always wanted to be involved in theater in general. Nonetheless, there was something so fulfilling in being able to say that for once I finally chose to do something for myself. Sure, it was not what I entirely expected since stage manager was never a role I saw myself in, but just the fact that I was taking the plunge in different areas of the entertainment industry on my own accord gave me some joy in the hectic month I had.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t take nineteen credits while trying to maintain a life outside of school. Just kidding.
The true moral of this story is that your biggest priority should be you. Now, that’s not to say you should make the world revolve around you, but if you ever have to put your mask on while on a plane, definitely put yours on first. You can’t help others if you don’t help yourself first and if it makes you feel better by tracking your mental health through cute doodles and lots of colors, then definitely go for it!