DECEMBER BULLET JOURNAL INSPIRATION
I know it's cliche, but I'm going to say it, so let's just get it out of the way - how is it December already?!? Where has 2019 gone, for real. I can feel myself getting all emotional here, but I need to hit pause on that because we do in fact still have one month of Bullet Journaling to go before we get to start making all those dreamy "2020 Planning" spreads *drools*.
If you follow me over on Instagram ( @meekymoojournals), you might already have read some of thoughts on my December spreads in the captions, but I wanted to clarify some things and kind of condense the scattered information here, in a blog post.
I hit a brick wall when it came to putting together my December 2019 bullet journal spreads - for a while I thought it was creative block, but eventually I realised it was more like the opposite. December is probably my favourite month to illustrate for - even though I don't really celebrate Christmas, I love so much of the imagery that proliferates at this time of year - cookies, and trees and presents and hot chocolate... and about a million other things, right? Well, I think that was the problem, I wanted to include ALL OF IT in my Bullet Journal, because hey, December only comes around once a year - the pressure was ON. This mindset led to me essentially just freezing up - no idea I had was "perfect" so I just wouldn't sit down and do anything.
Once I started to unravel all of this, I realised that this overwhelm I was feeling with Bullet Journal theme choices, was actually pretty representative of December as a month. Even though Kenny and I don't really celebrate Christmas, we come from families who do - and so there's parties and meals, cards to write, people to see and putting up childhood trees - I'm sure we're not the only ones. December becomes an intense month, and yes, while a lot of it is happy and bright and chocolate - it is still a lot, especially for someone like me who deals with a significant degree of anxiety and depression in day to day life.
So I decided instead to unburden myself from all the December pressure in my Bullet Journal and actually create a very minimal, simple, clean space to think in. I spent time painting some pretty rough winter leaves - which as well as being aesthetically pleasing, was also a very relaxing way to spend an afternoon. And then beyond that, I used exactly two pens for everything else. I don't have much in here this month - and in some ways that's a bit of a bummer; so many wasted illustration and layout opportunities - but in another way, it's nice to end the year with a bit of space to check in with myself, to take a look at some basic, healthy habits to keep centred on, throughout the chaos of the festive season.
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