Creatively In The Lines

I am a Type A, plan everything down to the minute type of person. I have been for as long as I can remember. I was that one nerd in high school that actually used the planners given to every student at the beginning of the school year; and the only one of my kind that I knew of. Moving on to college the trend stayed the same, however I even started to go so far as buy my owner planners at this point, if even to supplement the one(s) already given to me by the school. I like my life organized, I like the feeling of knowing what I am going to be doing and when and mostly I love that feeling of a task accomplished; that sense that you got done everything you needed to and making that little check when it was finished.

But there was always another side of me, one that I have never understood how it could go along so well with that Type A, draw inside the lines side. That was the side of me that was always wanting to pursue the creative, artist stuff. Free-spirited and colorful. I have always loved art, anything from drawing, painting, or even just being an art model, whatever got me close to all that artistic, hands-on stuff. I have been drawing and the like for years and years, always trying to improve this small talent. And while I am no Monet I feel I do okay for myself.

Then a few years ago, I was introduced to a way of life that I wasn't likely to give up anytime soon. It became such a deep-rooted passion for me, combining creativity and my love of being organized. That something was bullet journaling. It started as just me, drawing out my bullet journal and filming the process for YouTube and then morphed. I started pretty simple, with basic layouts and designs, loving that, but always feeling a drive to do more with it. Soon I was theming entire bullet journals cover to cover. Literally, I even designed new covers for them. One year I did a Harry Potter theme and transformed my journal into the Monster Book of Monsters, I did a Disney theme and turned the cover into a fairytale book, a video game theme that I turned into a Gameboy, and I have plans to do a comic book themed one. All of these very quickly became passion projects for me, documenting my process, start to finish, of each one along the way all on my YouTube channel.

Recently however, I found that I wanted to do even more with it. You see, bullet journaling gave me every freedom that I wanted, to be creative and structured all at once. They became more than a planner to me. They are my planners, my sketchbooks, journals/memories, budgeting tools, and so much more; anything I wanted them to be. Now I am creating a digital version of my journals for people to (hopefully) buy! But they just maybe don't have the time to dedicate to a journal of their own or maybe think that they don't have the talent for one, or simply wouldn't know what to fill it with. It has been such a journey for me and I hope to take it further. This new phase of bullet journaling has been almost twice the work but so incredibly fun and rewarding and I can only hope that I can make something of it.