I was pretty fed up with how 2016 turned out. I felt like I had all of these unspoken goals that I didn’t attain and if I did, I had no way of measuring it. When the New Year started I saw most of my writer friends posting that instead of having a resolution they were going to pick a word that would define their year. I couldn’t pick a word. I picked a phrase, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

That phrase has loads of meaning for me. As a writer in the blogging community, surrounded by other writers who talents are either far above my own (or far below), I often felt passed over. Sometimes, I’ll be honest I wanted to quit writing altogether. It was easy for me to pass the blame elsewhere as to why I had fewer reviews, fewer sales, fewer clicks, likes etc. Then after a full day of feeling sorry for myself, my husband said, “You know, you’re an amazing writer and if you wrote things that were uniquely you, then no one could ignore you.” As much as I hate to admit it, he was right.

My husband made a very successful career out of being so good that they can’t ignore you. He gets job offers every day from all over the world because he has a unique skill set. Some people would say he’s just in the right place at the right time but it took years of practice and study to get him to where he is now. Writing is no different. It will take years of writing and reading to get to the level of where I want to be but I’ll never get there if I don’t start now.

Once I figured out what I wanted to do this year, I had no idea how to get there or how to track it. Through the power of a few Google searches, I discovered Bullet Journaling. The reason why it’s so amazing is that it allows me to keep track of everything. Being a writer and a mom, my life is basically non-stop from 5 am when I get up to write to 9 pm when I finally put the kids to bed. Throw in dealing with my chronic pain/Fibromyalgia and life becomes even more difficult to manage effectively. Call it Fibro Fog or old age but I forget things, A LOT. The bullet journal helps be keep track of appointments, ideas, blog stats, my goals, and everyday things I had to keep in my mind so as not to forget. The constant repetition in my head of, “don’t forget to dump the cat box”, didn’t leave much room for daydreaming about my next book.

So how do you get started?

Define your goals, not your friends’ goals but your own. Sometimes this is the hardest part because we’re flooded by the lives of other people to the point we forget to live our own, by our own standards. I started by making a list of things I wanted to attain and broke them down into three categories, personal, financial, and career. Then, I created a list of tasks to get me there.

[image error]Stat tracker
Tracking your goals is the easy part and dare I say, even fun. One of my goals is to write 1500 words a day, not an easy feat for someone who suffers from Fibromyalgia hand pain. Each day I write down my word count so I can look back and see if I met my goal. I also want to submit short stories for publication, so I created a queries page to keep track of that. I have a page for my blog stats so I can measure my growth over the year. Each month, I go back to my goals page and figure out the tasks that I can accomplish that month to reach that goal.
Have fun with it because there’s no right way to Bullet Journal. I know that can be a scary thing for a writer since we thrive in a world of grammatical rules and formatting. I use my journal as part of my self-care. Being creative is relaxing to me and helps me unwind at the end of the day. The great thing about Bullet Journaling is that it’s there to serve you and become whatever you need it to be.

[image error]My week – organized.
[image error]The books want to read this year.
[image error]I’ll never forget another birthday or take the kids to school on a holiday.