Ada, thank you so much for the shout out in the Ambassador Follow-Up email about my bullet journal! I thought I would share some pictures here for those who might like a better look.
I’m chronically ill, so I’ve been using a bullet journal to track different things on-and-off since 2018. I use a discbound system, which lets me move my pages around and organize as I need. I bought some templates on Etsy and used my Cricut to cut out dividers:
You can tell pain is something new because the page is a meeesss (you can see I added appointments later in the page in pencil), but it’s been super useful when I see doctors because I can tell them exactly what hurt and when. One wondered if tracking pain might be a bad idea since it can make one hyperfocused, but I am the kind of person who wants to find patterns and understand why I feel some way, so I disagree. That said, one thing I will never track again is food.
Sleep is cleaner (X is for nightmares, / is for bad dreams - there’s a floating key page I didn’t photograph):
I haven’t set up my February-March pages yet, but I am looking forward to it! I am also considering making templates in Canva so that if I’m too busy or physically unable to make pages by hand, I can just print them out.
I’ve considered running bullet journaling programs at the library, but I’m not sure how I want to frame them, since it is such a personal experience. It might benefit from being a hangout where we have supplies available and some relaxing music in the background and can share if we want.
I think having a bullet journaling cafe as a program might be fun.
Perhaps print out a bunch of examples as inspiration - or make a powerpoint slideshow of examples, if you have access to a large wall-mounted monitor. Have a list of various things that can be tracked. Talk about data visualization and why seeing trends might be important or enlightening. And why some things (like food!) might be less desireable to track or what to be aware of, mentally, when tracking things.
Maybe buy a bunch of blank notebooks and have various supplies available for embellishment.
And now I have a late winter program proposal to write… Thank you!
Thank you @heba for sharing your data tracking and process with us! I like how it shows that you’ve added pain and appointments later, because it updates with your thoughts and questions.
There are so many ways to frame this kind of program for your library. I understand how this is personal and may be hard to share with your library patrons or for them to speak up about it, but I absolutely appreciate that you shared this with us! This data collection is incredibly meaningful to you, helping you navigate your pain, and using it to see patterns and make decisions about what you will do next.
I imagine that this could be a powerful example for tweens or teens to reflect on their physical and mental health, or questions they might have about the people around them, about nature, or to test out any cause-effect correlations they may have.
This is very inspiring and I’m planning to integrate this direction into the updated data activity! Thanks again
Our library had a planner party program for a bit… the teens really liked it. We had some happy planners, covers, stickers and markers/pens donated. They would get together every week and just came together to compare or create their layouts, share stamps, stickers, and just hold that time and space for planning their lives.
Thank you!