The Brakes We Take

Sometimes in life, we need to take a break.

Sometimes we need to hit the brakes.

Sometimes, need need both.

Humans have this amazing ability to behave instinctively based on our needs in the moment. We crave certain foods depending on our nutritional needs, we either gravitate toward people or away from them based on our social needs…we humans, whether we know it or not, are truly masters of our needs.

This revelation brings me to my very lonely bullet journal.

A few short months ago, I was interviewed on the Teachers Supporting Teachers podcast about how bullet journaling changed my life. There has even been talk about a project for teachers involving bullet journaling. Yet, for a couple of month’s now, my bullet journal has seen minimal use.

I have been using a Frankenlite GTD spread (thank you Brian Hazard), I’ve been using a monthly tracker inspired by Elsa Rhae, and they have been AMAZING for keeping myself sorted.

I just haven’t felt like doing any of it.

I’ve sorta, kinda been using a weekly spread, but even that has gone by the wayside. For me the weekly spread is not only planning my day’s activities, but also a bit of a highlights log of events that happen during that week.

Sometimes weeks go by that I only note that a weekly log was intended to go in the spread, but it remains, mostly blank.

You see, my neurodiverse brain (ADHD) thrives on structure, most of the time. But you know those people who talk about their daily practices and the discipline they embody?

Sometimes, that’s just not me.

I have discipline, but like so many things, it waxes and wanes.

That’s part of my neurodiversity. My brain requires nuance and diversity in stimulation. I started bullet journaling almost a year ago, and at times I hit it hard, and other times, like now, I barely touch it.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this hiatus though: bullet journaling is about the process, not the product.

That can be said for one of my professions, music therapy as well.

I don’t know why it took me so long to make that connection with bullet journaling!

I started to get frustrated when I realized that I was rarely using the monthly log. My monthly tracker started to feel tedious to set up…and do I REALLY care which days of the month I practiced learning Morse code? Does it matter which days I walked at least 10,000 steps?

Not really…

It started to feel like tracking all of this data, logging daily events and the like was just a way to keep my intellect engaged, which often keeps me from living from my heart.

It was that…an exercise in intellect, but what it took me a while to figure out was that the process of bullet journaling was also helping me manage my anxiety, as well as my ADHD.

This is akin to when children in school question their teacher, asking, “When are we EVER going to use this stuff?”

Sometimes it’s not about what you are learning, or what you are doing, but about how that process makes everything else work.

Those bullet journal spreads weren’t necessarily the critical piece to keeping the parts of my life together, but the process of creating them seems to make everything else work better.

This break has helped me see the rich process that has been going on behind the scenes in my life when I bullet journal.

Now I’ve picked up my bullet journal, grateful for this process that keeps me together in ways I am still learning.

For me, break time is over.