Don’t be Ashamed of a Minimalist Bullet Journal

I’ve seen something on boards that discuss Bullet Journals that make me a little sad. You’ll see these gorgeous layouts and artwork and suchlike that people post about when they show their journals. No, that doesn’t make me sad. I like pretty.

What I’ll see are people commenting that they don’t want to show or talk about theirs because of crap handwriting, or lack of artwork or lack of pretty layouts. Yes, artsy bullet journaling is a valid way to do it. If it wasn’t, who cares? It’s your life; organize it how you want to. However, I want to put out a much plainer version just to show that the idea of a bullet journal has nothing to do with the art. It is all about the structure and its flexibility. For reference, check out the original video on how to make a Bullet Journal.

Here’s my Index.

Figure 1: Index

There is nothing pretty or fancy about this. The handwriting is legible, although just barely, and I am even switching out pen colors, without using color as any sort of information indicator. I know it looks like I did a different color for a different month. I didn’t. My turquoise pen just ran out of ink, and I’m going to have to wait for the replacement I ordered to come in.

You want part of the beauty of a Bullet Journal for me? There it is. I have a notebook. I have a pen. I’m all good.

In fact, let’s talk notebooks. Yes, you can get yourself a fancy, expensive notebook. I might sometime in the future. This is the one I have. It has hard covers and paper that isn’t too ink-absorbent. But a thirty-dollar notebook, it ain’t. It works great.

Figure 2: Notebook Cover

I did draw out my November layouts a little in advance. I did this first because I don’t have a lot going on between now and the end of the month but routine chores and Halloween, and second because even if it turns out I need to take a lot of notes for something, I can add a module and put it in my Index. After all, that’s exactly the point.

Figure 3: Monthly Log

Figure 4: Menu Plan and Grocery List

Figure 5: Habit Tracker

Even my habit tracker is plain text. If I do what I intend to do that day, I just write a big X over the date just as I would over a task bullet when marking the task as done. The sole exception to this is exercise, as I do more than one sort.

So, for those of you who have very plain Bullet Journals without the artwork, don’t be ashamed of them. While doing the artwork and fancy layout thing is fine, you don’t have to, nor is it at the core of the system. It can work for you how you need it with just pen, a notebook, and text.

October 18, 2016

Bullet Journal: One Month In

I’m the beepy reminder girl. My device goes BING! and I do stuff.

I’m learning that in many ways, this is something of a mistake. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to develop routine habits — making the bed, washing clothes, that kind of thing. It’s good for a cue to do routine maintenance.

Where it falls down is when you’re planning a project or working on something where you need to create or concentrate.

Can the beepy reminder go BING! and then you write 1,000 words?

Sort of. I mean, you can. But the problem is that attention, energy and mood matter to creative work. More, beepy reminders interrupt you when you might be deep in creative work.

I want my house clean, yes. But I also want to write books and articles. I want to do cognitive work. I don’t want a beepy reminder bugging me at 10 am that I need to go ahead and fold the clothes from the dryer when I am in the middle of torturing my main character or analyzing the flaws in an organizational system for an article.

I’ve talked about flow before, and how interruptible tasks have often been considered “women’s work,” which very much interferes with the flow state and creative work.

The Bullet Journal is better than beepy reminders for encouraging a flow state.

I have used the Bullet Journal for some really mundane stuff this month. Encouraging me to clean the house, stay on top of finances – that sort of thing. But I’ve also been using it for more long-term work. I have sections for business planning and for a book I am writing. I can always schedule specific tasks to work on for specific days, mind. And I do.

But one of the things that the Bullet Journal is really helping me do is plan my day for more, instead of less, focus. The beepy reminders, for all that they help me keep my house clean, completely screw up my focus for writing.

What I Don’t Do

I’ve been researching Bullet Journals online. There are a lot of amazingly creative people that will draw themselves time period layouts (days, weeks, months) in colors, use color coding, write some headings in calligraphy, draw pictures in their journals and other things. They look great, and I can imagine that it’s fun and soothing to do.

I don’t do this. Mostly I don’t because I can’t draw and my handwriting is terrible, as you can see in the images. I also don’t do it because the “art project” aspect doesn’t add to its usefulness to me. If I want pretty pages and so on, I have a million computer tools that I can use to do so, and it’s not entirely the point of this experiment.

So, if you find yourself drawn to the art project version of Bullet Journaling (and sorry, purists and minimalists, it’s just as valid a use of the system, so get off your high horse), I’m not going to be a very reliable reporter of the experience or the usefulness.

Figure 1: My wretched handwriting

What I Do

The Bullet Journal is a productivity tool that packs a subtle punch. At its purest, it’s absurdly simple to use. It also focuses your brain in a way that I’m sorry to say that computerized tools don’t. This is coming from the Gadget Queen. I especially adore electronic devices, and genuinely do use them heavily. I read on a tablet (or my computer, since there are plenty of e-reader apps for the PC, too). I use my tablet for knitting charts and use OneNote to keep track of where I am in a lace chart. My media collection is mostly digital. I loves me some gadgets.

Even in the face of that, I’m finding the paper journal is better for overall productivity.

Why paper is working better for me

The module layout of the Bullet Journal is quite fluid and allows for creating both date and topic collections of information. When I want to sit down and have a long planning session about a book I am writing, I can keep my notes in a single module. However, if there is something specific about that project that is conducive to a task, I can make that task and migrate it very easily to a specific day where I will be taking action on it.

This means that the actions I’m taking, instead of being “busy” for the sake of being busy, are actual things that will move my project forward.

There is a certain permanence that I tend to associate mentally with paper as well. Since I know it’s really only reasonable to have ten or so tasks to perform in a day, and I’m writing out my to-do list the night before, I’m thinking carefully about what I am going to do. The act of physically writing it seems more serious somehow, if that makes any sense.

This also means that I’m procrastinating less. Oh, I still do some of that, and even blow off tasks. But when I do, it becomes very obvious. I either have to migrate it to a day I will do it, or I have to admit to myself that I’m not going to do it and cross it off. Phone calls I’m avoiding, or tasks I need to do but am balking at? I’m quicker just to do it to get it off my damn conscience with that nice X beside the entry.

That X is also incredibly motivating. One of the things most electronic task managers do wrong is make completed tasks disappear. In a way, it seems good, but seeing what you’ve actually done in a day also can feel pretty good and be motivating.

What doesn’t work for me on paper

That being said, no one system is perfect. There are things the Bullet Journal doesn’t handle well.

The first on the list is a physical reminder. I tend to get absorbed in a task and lose track of time. As a writer, this is not a bug, but a feature. Even so, there are occasions in which I need to drop what I am doing and go to a meeting, appointment or whatever. I like the electronic calendar for that. The fact that the Bullet Journal is a very personal thing also can be a drawback when you are dealing with a group or family project. The fact I can share my electronic calendar with my family is very nice. It makes things easier on us.

It also isn’t too much use in my detail cleaning schedule. I have a list of chores I do quarterly (well, every thirteen weeks) that I find I’d never remember if I had to schedule them daily. I suppose I could make a module that listed these chores and migrate them to daily chores. I don’t, though. I have them set up in my electronic task manager to repeat every thirteen weeks, and I just add the relevant daily chore to my Bullet Journal when prepping for the next day. Anything that’s routine, but on a long cycle might to better in electronic format.

As a freelancer, I also get a lot of my work from clients in the form of email. I am more likely to flag the email to follow up at the appropriate time (I use Outlook) than I am to do anything else.

Better thinking regarding accomplishment over time

Some of the standard Bullet Journal modules – the Future Planner and the Monthly Planner, for instance, encourage you to look at things you want to accomplish over time better.

One thing I tend to find a drawback to the daily granularity is that I let time get away from me. I don’t necessarily think in terms of more than a week when I do this. With the Future Planner and the Monthly Planner, I really do think of what I want to accomplish over a month.

However, a couple of weeks in, I also realized that while the monthly and daily task lists are nice, I do like to see my week as a unit as well. So, I just added a module for the week and went on with my work.

For each unit of time, six months, month, or week, I will glance at what I am planning and migrate any tasks I want to accomplish during that time to the appropriate module. It sounds like a lot of work and migrating, I know. But it turns out to be less than you’d think. Why? It forces you to think clearly about what you need/want to get done, but also forces you to think about whether or not what you’re doing is going to accomplish any of your goals or is just busywork.

Figure 2: A Weekly Spread

September 27, 2016October 17, 2016

Organizational Systems and Trying Something New

Since I was in my teens, I’ve liked playing with organizational systems. FlyLady, Konmari, a budget book when I was first married, Everyday Systems… I’ve worked with lots of them.

At first, I thought I was looking for The Perfect System. But you know, I don’t think I am. I think what it comes down to is that I like playing with ways to structure life. Which, regarding Real Productivity, would be considered a waste of time. The focus should be more on organization and productivity, not the system, right?

I started to feel guilty about that, but then I thought, “Well, of all the weird hobbies or obsessions one could have, enjoying exploring productivity and organizational systems is hardly a bad one. You do have a clean house. Your bills are paid. Obviously, this is not subtracting from your enjoyment of life, nor from living effectively.”

Which is the point. Playing with systems and routines over the years has ultimately gotten me some things I actually want. Whether or not I stuck with a particular one doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the play and exploration itself has taught me things and I have gained rather than lost from it (I do still shine my sink and question whether or not a possession sparks joy). Is it a weirdly obsessive hobby? Yeah, it sure is.

This brings me to the Bullet Journal. Do I really need this, since I’ve got OneNote and Remember the Milk and a Household Notebook and… Well, you get the point.

No, I don’t need it. I could get along perfectly well without it. My life is pretty organized and has been for some decades. I am productive. My business makes a modest profit and at least pays for our groceries, even in a bad month. Still, when you watch a video on it, and your husband brings you home a blank notebook in which to try it, we’re talking about a hobby/experiment that’s cheaper than my knitting or the books I buy. Why not?

What is a Bullet Journal?

Ultimately, a Bullet Journal is on paper. This is for the Luddite. Normally, I’m all about technology and beepy reminders, so this is going to be a very different experiment.

It is set up in some basic modules that you then use to organize anything you care to, but ultimately your life. It is meant to be quick-n-dirty. In its original form, you don’t need to spend a lot of time doing the logging.

A warning: If you look up Bullet Journals in social media, you’ll see pretty calligraphy, drawings and all kinds of nifty stuff. This isn’t what you’ll see from me. My handwriting stinks. I can’t draw. This is going to be a lot more basic than how many people with considerably more calligraphic ability and artistic flair will use it. My stuff is only pretty when there’s the aid of a computer available!

How does the Bullet Journal Work?

The Modules

The Bullet Journal is broken down into several modules, but the basics are the Index, the Future Log, the Monthly Log and Collections. They work together so that you can integrate and update your work on the fly. This is meant to be dynamic and intuitive. I’ve already found it works well to organize the results of brainstorming.

Index

The Index is exactly what it says on the label. A place to record information and where to find it. You list topics and then the page number of where you can find these topics in the Bullet Journal. The advantage here is that this can be a work in progress acknowledging you don’t know what the future will look like. If you need to add something, but there isn’t room, it’s easy enough to add and record where to find it in the Index.

Future Log

After you’ve created your index, you turn to the next two-page blank spread and create your Future Log. While you can break it down however you want, I’ve taken the advice of the Bullet Journal originator and chosen a six-month period for my spread. As I think of things I need to get done in the future, this is where I can record it for future reference. When the month approaches, I can then copy what’s necessary to my Monthly Log. Remember to write down the location of your Future Log in your Index!

Monthly Log

To create a monthly log, turn to the next two blank pages and begin. You’ll notice I did not do two blank pages for September. It’s almost over. When I get to October, I’ll do it properly.

On the left-hand side, you number the dates and then list the days of the week beside each date. For those of you who have packed days, THIS IS NOT A MEETING CALENDAR. You can adapt the Bullet Journal for that by adding a calendar module, and if you scan the Internet, you’ll see that many have. The point here is to record important, high-level highlights for your month.

On the right-hand side, you list the things you need to accomplish in the month. As you start to use the journal over time, if there are things from the previous month that you did not get done, you can migrate them to the new month. This sounds like a lot of tedious copying, but in fact is a feature rather than a bug. If you’ve postponed it month to month for a long time, is it really that important? Maybe you ought to cross it off your list. It’s a great way to evaluate what’s genuinely worth your time.

Daily Log

The Daily Log is where you focus on a day-to-day basis. Notice how you’re already encouraged to take a longer view, and then an increasingly more granular view of your time as you progress? This allows for both big picture planning as well as breaking this down into actionable items you can do on a daily basis. I really like how this works.

Collections

Sometimes you’re working on something that’s more properly a project and should be organized in a single place. This is where you can record your ideas, tasks you need to accomplish, any brainstorming or notes about the project. When you create tasks, you can migrate these to your daily tasks, thus keeping a daily to-do list pretty organized. More about migrating tasks under Bullets.

I decided to make a Collection to organize for the holidays this year. It’s a decent enough project and should be a good experiment.

The Bullets

The bullets are symbols or signifiers indicating what the entry actually is. You’ll start by listing tasks with dots. Then it is easy to change these symbols as you need to reschedule a task, or need to indicate it’s important, or just about anything else.

Task (Just a dot)
* = High priority task
X = Completed task
< = Migrated to Future Log
> = Migrated to Monthly/Daily Log
0 = Event
– = Note
! = Inspiration
= Explore/Needs research

Conclusion

In playing with the system for a day, I do find it kind of fun. It’s not yet ten in the morning, and you can see I’ve already completed a few items on today’s list as well as written this article. Over time as it becomes more mundane, I’ll do another article to report on how much I liked it, what works, what doesn’t and if I want to keep up with this.

September 3, 2016

The Key to Frugality: Where’s the Thrill?

I was doing the family books this morning and noticed an expenditure that looked kind of excessive. I talked to my husband about it, laughed and commented, “You know, we could stop doing that, put the money we’d normally spend on it in a savings account each month, then go on a cruise.”

Yeah, I know, I tagged the post “frugality”, and here I am talking cruises.

There’s a reason for that.

Once your basic needs are met (and yes, being good with money can help with that), being careful with your money is about living deliberately – making sure you actually have what you want to have, and thinking carefully about what that is.

Here’s one: Coffee. I love a good coffee. Do I go out to the coffee store chain and buy it?

Only if I am traveling. I have a Chemex and do my own pour-overs. Shoot, I even used to make them at work rather than buy the coffee available at the café. I’m not getting a lesser thing or doing without something I love. Rather the opposite! What I love is really good coffee, and I know how to make it, so I do.

If what I loved was the experience of the coffee shop, then buying the coffee in the shop would be the better choice.

The thing is, you can’t know where the thrill is until you know where the money is going.

If you want to save money, record every penny you spend

While I do use financial software (I run a small business), a free Google Docs spreadsheet would work just fine. Both my father and my son use a spreadsheet, and it works for them. There are lots of free financial tracking apps available if you have a smartphone. When my husband and I were first married, we didn’t have a computer, and this record was kept on paper. It doesn’t matter what format you use. The point is to write down everything you buy.

Doughnut? Write it down. Classify it as Food. If you really want to get granular, you can break it down as Groceries and Restaurants, but you don’t necessarily have to when you get started.

Maserati tune-up? Write it down. Classify it as Auto. Again, if you’re going for granularity, you could classify it as Auto: Service, but when getting started, you probably don’t need to take it that far.

You can make up classifications that make sense to you but don’t go too crazy with it. The important thing is to make it relatively easy to make this a habit.

At first, it’s not going to seem particularly useful. There will be expenses where you’ll say, “Yeah, but I don’t exactly replace the tires every month. This month was an exception.”

The thing is, after you keep this up over a period of about a year, patterns emerge. You find out that you go out to dinner every two weeks on payday. This is actually neither good nor bad. While we all know that eating out is much more expensive than cooking your own meals, the point isn’t that you should only make the cheap choices.

The point is, are you following a general habit that isn’t really providing a kick for you, or are you doing something you truly and consciously love to do?

You might look at those meals out and say to yourself, “Sure I enjoy it, but I don’t get $200 a month’s worth of enjoyment out of it! I think I’m going to cut back to once a month.”

You might look at those meals out and say, “Oh man, dinner out just makes me smile every time I think about it. I love doing that having people around me and being waited on. In fact, I’m cutting back on buying yarn for knitting, because this is something that’s really worth my time and money to do.”

You might look at those meals out and say, “The thing that gives me a kick for those dinners is the candlelight, the well-presented meal, and the nice place setting.” You’re also a good cook, have a tablecloth, candlesticks, and nice china, so you decide that you’re going to make fancy meals for yourself more often and buy those high-end knitting needles you’ve had your eye on, or put it in savings because what you really want is the security of knowing that if an emergency comes up, you have it covered.

Notice that the different ways of looking at it. In each case, it’s the combination of knowing what you’re doing and what you’re spending plus knowing what it is about it that’s giving you the thrill. In each case, you can make a conscious choice to get the best value out of your money by spending wisely.

July 29, 2016July 28, 2019

Assistive Technology and Being a Grown Up

I genuinely, no kidding, need assistive technology to be a grown up. I’m 47, so I was in my thirties before I had A) the technology, and B) a system to help get around this. It is not always perfect, but this helps.

The technology means I have beepy reminders to do things. I use these for everything from making my bed and washing the dishes to making sure I work on contracts for clients and keeping up with relationships with people I care about.

Thing is, as anyone who has this problem knows, beepy reminders are not enough. You’ll go down a rabbit hole chasing something that isn’t important pretty quick and still not solve everything.

I have to combine this with a pretty strict schedule. If I don’t stick to it, my llfe falls apart. My schedule would seem crazy and oppressive to someone who doesn’t share my issues. It deals with bedtimes, when to do paperworky stuff like calling for and scheduling appointments and doing bills, making sure I get enough exercise, making sure I take some time to do something chosen at a whim, making sure I contact people that are important to me or doing the shopping and even scheduling opportunities for naps (I need a lot of sleep)

It helps a lot. I find I need something from the store? Its goes on the list for my scheduled shopping day. Barring an emergency, I only shop then. I get a bill I need to deal with, or some other taxy-kinda thing? It goes on my pile for Paperwork time. (Filing Time comes after Paperwork time). Tasks are broken down into very small units and I’ll think ahead to plan out what is needed for each step of a task to make sure I have what I need for the task before I go on. And yes, Plan Tasks has its own place on my schedule.

Thing is, if you see me in an office situation, you’ll think I’m really organized and together. I worked for a man for THREE YEARS who thought I was really organized and had this great memory until he played a joke on me before my last day, asking for some work I’d never agreed to do. I didn’t catch that he was being outrageous and goofy because I was automatically going to my computer to look up what I’d agreed to do and see what progress I’d made on it. He was surprised when I confessed to him that I had a system to take care of stuff because I get so distracted and can’t remember things.

Some people can just DO this stuff. My mom can. She sees dirt or clutter, and she just CLEANS it, and doesn’t get distracted. I can’t do that. it isn’t NATURAL to me, so I had to develop some very rigid routines to take care of it instead. To someone who does not have my problems, it probably seems like a terribly regimented way to live. In some ways, it is.

But the house is clean (enough), I get enough exercise, bills get paid and paperwork followed up on. That things get taken care of is better for me than the anxiety and confusion I experience when I do not have these rigid systems in place.

May 30, 2016October 29, 2016

Accidental Vegan

I’m going to tell on myself here. I’m all for the whole frugal cooking thing, bringing your own lunch to work, prepping in advance… All that smack.

I haven’t been doing it lately, and when I took a good look at the family budget, I realized that we’re buying lunch at work too damned often. I’m not even going to give the dollar figure here, because it’s might look trivial to some, but for me it’s high enough to be embarrassing.

Anyway, I decided to make up some easy to grab cold salads for us to bring to work. One of them was just your basic chicken salad, which we like a lot. (Yes, not vegan. I know!)

The other one is a Black Bean and Quinoa salad. I’m passing on the recipe because a lot of people are going to parties and cookouts where we might not know the dietary requirements of people there. This particular recipe is not only gluten-free, it’s vegan. Me? I’m a total carnivore, but this is still a favorite lunch ’cause it tastes good.

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad

2 c quinoa
15 oz can of black beans
11 oz can of corn
1 large red pepper
¼ c. chopped onion
1 large stalk celery, diced
Salt
Pepper
1 T olive oil
½ cumin

Cook the quinoa according to directions on package. Allow to cool. Mix with salt and pepper to taste, then add cumin.

Sauté red pepper, onion and celery in olive oil until onion begins to become translucent. Stir into quinoa mixture. Stir in black beans and corn.

Chill.

May 10, 2016October 29, 2016

You Don’t Have to be Beautiful

I’m tired of the “All Bodies are Beautiful” rhetoric.

Why? There’s still the goddamned pressure to think of yourself as beautiful above anything else.

Am I beautiful? As in photogenic?

Hell no.

Does that mean I feel badly about my looks?

Not unless I have to deal with some asshole deciding to be mean to me because I’m not beautiful, and therefore need to be punished for it in his eyes.

And that’s exactly the point. If we do the “all bodies are beautiful” thing, what we’re really saying is that beauty is the most important value to have, and trying to make people who aren’t physically beautiful focus on that as the important value.

I’m not beautiful. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s cool for people who are, and goodness knows they should enjoy it. I enjoy being smart. I enjoy being determined. I enjoy that partners find me attractive. (Beauty and charisma are two very different things. Charisma is a skill, and yes, I can turn that on if I want to). I am blessed with a strong, agile body and I love that.

Do I like my body?

Good heavens, YES! I am an extremely physical person and yes, I like my body. I love the way it feels when I pull through the water during a swim. I love the agility of my fingers as I knit. I love dancing and letting my body and mind merge with music. I love the way I can use facial expressions to communicate volumes without saying a word. I love the feel of well-tailored fabric and admire the way good clothes move with my body.

I love these things independent of any aesthetic view of my body, and it takes the pressure off to be goddamned “beautiful” all the time.

‘Cause, come on, I’ve got stuff to do!

December 31, 2015October 29, 2016

The Mareli List and Not Exactly Resolutions

What is the Mareli List, Anyway?

My husband has this mental list he calls his Mareli List. It is named after his maternal grandmother and is from her custom of how she looked back on a specific year. To the end of her life, she always looked back trying to find things she had never done before. They could be big or small, but she made a specific effort to do new things. She had just turned 90 when she passed away, so this means that she lived a pretty rich and varied life.

2015 has been a good year for me in terms of my Mareli list. In no particular order, I:

Learned to do a flip turn.
Swam in 50-degree water.
Swam 2 miles in open water
Swam 2.5 miles in a pool
Swam across Boston Harbor
Rode a Segway.
Visited Bermuda
Visited Cape Liberty and saw the Teardrop Memorial.
Took a salsa dancing class
Took a class in how to make cupcakes.
Saw the Statue of Liberty in person.
Learned a new method of knowledge management (Knowledge Centered Support, or KCS)
Konmaried the house.
Negotiated with an airline for a better flight.
Visited Mt. Vernon
Visited Ferry Farm. (I mean, I grew up on the land, but I’d never visited the historic site)
Tried Glendronach Scotch.

With these things in mind, and feeling like I had a decent year, I’m looking on to the next year and what I want to do with it.

Not Exactly Resolutions for 2016

I know some people don’t like the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, and ya know, I get the point. Often it’s some self-improvement thing that people approach as something they oughta do, but without any real serious plan or genuine purpose. Lose weight, get their finances in order, or whatever – it’s not something that’s really got a plan behind it.

My resolutions are more goals than any real attempt at habit change. I’m sure good habits will happen during this process, but this year, I have more specific things I want to do or accomplish. In no particular order, I want to:

Implement KCS at my office.
Write the first draft of a novel starring three middle-aged ladies.
Swim 6 miles in Lake Mephremagog.
Knit myself one or two sweaters.
Travel cross-country by train.
Swim from Alcatraz island to Aquatic Park without a wetsuit.

This is a good mix, I think. I have professional goals, I have physical goals, and I have enjoyment goals. One of the habits I am going to have to develop better along the way is the habit of consistent over heroic effort. Some of this stuff will require something in the way of heroic effort, but that won’t sustain what I want to do in the long run. It’s going to be the dailyness of plugging away at it that will get me there.

October 7, 2015January 7, 2019

The KonMari Report –Six Months

Okay, I think I am going to have to refute Marie Kondo’s claim that once you go through the house according to her method, you’ll never be untidy again.

No, my house is not particularly a mess. My bed is made, my clothes put away, the only laundry that isn’t put away is either in the laundry basket waiting to be washed, in the washing machine being washed or is currently drying in the dryer (yes, I’m doing laundry this morning).

My drawers and closets are still neat, sure enough. But I do have a craft project on the dining room table. There are dishes in the sink because I need to empty the dishwasher (I think my husband ran it this morning before he went to work. Thanks, sweetie!)

There is a napkin on the arm of my chair.

Is my house messy? Maybe by Ms. Kondo’s standards, but I can’t think of anyone else who might think so.

So, no. The house is not perfect. I do not empty my bags and purses the second I get home every day. I have a gym bag (emptied of sweaty or wet stuff, true) sitting on a rocking chair in the jungle room. I’ll be filling that to go do my swim in a few minutes, so I am fine with that.

Does this mean I think that Marie Kondo’s method didn’t really work?

Goodness no!

I am very glad we did it. We really did keep only what we use and makes us happy. I have plenty of storage space for my stuff now, and it is easier to put things away. That means I am generally quicker to do so.

I think part of the problem was a simple one. It doesn’t look that dramatic because in general, the house didn’t look too messy to begin with. We recycle properly now, and have a place to put recycling because we cleaned out the mudroom properly. We have a nice place to store cleaning supplies because we cleaned out a junk storage place properly. The changes are less dramatically visual and more centered around the fact that we don’t waste house room on things we don’t use and love.

Do I ever look in a closet or drawer and ask myself, “Does this spark joy?”

Totally. So I weed a little bit every now and then just on a routine basis. I’m quicker to toss the pen that doesn’t write well, or the makeup that doesn’t really please. It does keep storage under control.

But that little bit at a time stuff? That’s FlyLady habits.

It was a thought I was having as I was comparing the two methods, and I think we’re getting into a “right tool for the right job” situation.

For a massive declutter, you need the big shovel. That’s absolutely the Konmari method. Hands-down, I think it is better for the Big Declutter.

For daily maintenance? FlyLady. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up doesn’t address maintenance at all, and I think that’s a big hole in the process. She claims you’ll just naturally stay all tidy. I’m not so sure about that. Don’t get me wrong. The reboot was wonderful. Having good storage space and a big, dramatic change in how much I had was great. It is hard to put something away when you have nowhere to put it. I agree wholeheartedly that expensive storage systems are silly. I did buy a charging station for my bedside table for my devices, and I really love it, though.

But the Konmari method presumes you’ll magically maintain this. I’m don’t. Not really. I have to think about it. I do scans of the house to see that things are put away. I don’t get up and put things away the second I am done using them. I put it away the same DAY, which is certainly fine, but I do have to clear off flat surfaces that are collecting stuff like mail, packages and general detritus from the dailiness of life rather than putting it away immediately. I really think that the habits of dailiness and daily routine that I’d been working on for fifteen odd years were what made the whole big declutter a more useful thing. It’s been years since my house has gotten more than fifteen minutes worth of messy, barring a party or something.

I may get to things a little quicker than before. I’m less tolerant of my surroundings being messy for a long period of time, so I do take five to put stuff away more regularly. But do I keep it perfect and pristine all the time?

Nope. And I’m cool with that.

August 11, 2015

What if Happiness Isn't an Emotion?

I’ve often talked about love not being an emotion, but a set of behaviors, a commitment, and a way of interacting. That’s true. Sure, sure, emotions are included in that, but it is not the sum total of what love is.

One thing I’ve often pondered, chewed on and driven myself crazy with is the idea that happiness is an emotion and there’s something wrong because I don’t often feel it.

What if happiness (as in a state of being with one’s life) is like love, and actually an emotion, but a state of being over time that has to do less with actual emotion and more to do with life and choices in relationship to it?

(I know this is weird, but stay with me here. I just asked this question about thirty seconds ago when my To-do Beepy Reminder went off to tell me it was time to get some writing done. This is not a planned-out essay.)

There is some background to this. I am always looking at systems for things. It’s just kind of the way I am built. If there’s an underlying logic or method to doing or being, I’m going to run in that direction. It’s just the way I am, and in general, I like it that way.

So, I was feeling kind of upset and depressed and frustrated about things a few months ago when I downloaded a mood monitoring app for my smartphone. (How Are You mood tracker. You can get it on Google Play, I know).

You’re asked to rate your mood on several criteria — how determined and ready to act you feel, how frustrated you feel, etc. You get a beepy reminder to do this three or so times a day, and the results were kind of interesting to me.

No, more than interesting. They were an uncomfortable revelation.

My mood was pretty consistently above 70% on the scale as an average. Oh, sure, it dipped from time to time, but overall, my mood as I was self-rating in the moment was generally pretty damn high. You’re asked if you’re feeling: Alert, Hostile, Friendly, Determined, Active, and a couple of other things I forget. It’s nine different questions, anyway. You have this circle slider where you drag to estimate how much of each of the different states of being you’re feeling at that moment.

I just took the test and it had my mood at 86%. Now, I’ve been pondering Life, the Universe and Everything most of the morning, and it’s a gray day, so I wouldn’t have said I’m all that happy at the moment.

But, maybe I’m tagging the wrong state of being as happy. I mean, the test could be a load of crap, but I’m wondering if my point of view is really what’s been messed up. I’m wondering if I’m mapping joyful to happy, and happy is a quieter thing. Seriously. To me, happy is being on a boat on the ocean or being at the beach or swimming or finishing writing a novel or teaching a class or knitting something or being with my family.

Maybe those things are better than happy. Maybe those things are joyful. Which is cool, ’cause I get a lot of joyful stuff in my life, and that’s pretty awesome.

But if happy is really more about some ratio of Attentiveness, Determination, Active, and Inspired over Upset, Hostile, Nervous, Afraid, Ashamed (yes, I looked it up rather than guessed), Determination, Attentiveness and Inspiration are almost always pretty strongly present in my mental landscape. They’re gonna be there whether or not I am feeling what *I* would call a positive mood in the moment. That means, I’m going to be rated as “happy” by this scale more often than not.

While I’d never really considered myself a particularly positive person, I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe I kinda am, and while I’m moody as hell, that may have less to do with my overall state of being than once I thought. Maybe it’s like waves, you know? They knock you down, or you dive under them, but if you know how to swim, and pay attention to the push and pull of the water, you generally can cope and even have fun with them.

Maybe it’s like my view of love, and happiness isn’t entirely an emotion, but a amalgam of many sometimes conflicting things, just like swimming in the ocean can be.

Whether or not it’s true, it kind of makes me feel better about Life, the Universe and Everything.