creativity & organization
I'm finally getting around to giving myself space to write an update. I completed the 90 day probation period in my new job last week (so woohoo to it being more difficult to fire me, not that it was likely to happen anyways, lol)! I have been pretty overwhelmed these last couple of months. Between starting this new job (that has so much more work than my old job did, which is a mixed blessing), moving across town, partaking in a dear friends' wedding (it was the first wedding I ever went to and I was a bridesmaid :D ), and assisting my roommates with their recent transportation issues, I've been SO DAMN TIRED. The surprising thing is that I didn't realize how stressed I was until a couple weeks ago when I had a mini breakdown at work and pretty much realized the sheer amount of things on my plate. Since then I've had some conversations with my team lead and unit director about work stuff, and some of my personal responsibilities have wrapped up or my stress has been mentioned to contributing parties and is beginning to be addressed.
Something that has been a real challenge for me during the past few months, but is really helpful once I get a system set up, is organization. With the new move and the new job, I have been experiencing a lot of disorganization as I adjust to my new spaces, responsibilities, and roles. In the move, we ended up downsizing in a couple of ways. We lost a roommate who recently moved in with her new husband. In losing that roommate I also lost what felt like one of my main support pillars in the house. Lets just say she and I made up the responsible half of the household, so I've lost some of that... guaranteed/instinctual support (maybe that's the way to say it, basically I didn't have to tell her to clean, or do things around the house, or check that she paid bills, etc.). We also went from renting a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom apartment. I personally went from having a bedroom (that I share with my bf) and an office/studio, to just having the shared bedroom and trying to fit my office and art supplies in the living room.
With work, you might say I've upsized. I went from being in a position that was poorly defined and where I had so little to do and so few expectations that I was consistently looking for work to do and things to improve the sad state of the library. Now I work in a position that already had a clearly defined role with a variety of tasks and responsibilities assigned to it, as well as projects in development and underway. So now I have a pretty full plate at work that I'm still analyzing and understanding as I try to figure out what my regular work flow might look like and how I should be prioritizing various responsibilities. I've been juggling more tasks and responsibilities lately, and organization has been key in knowing what all I need to work on. I'd been wanting to have a bullet journal for a while and even bought notebooks and outlined what all I thought I wanted to record in it and looked at different spreads and layouts, but it pretty much stopped there. Between my indecisiveness on layouts and fear of messing up, my physical bullet journal went nowhere. But the idea of a digital bullet journal had sprouted from all of my layout design searches.
So after looking at some templates others had made, I went to Canva and made one of my own. You can check it out at the link at the bottom of this post. I made it over the course of maybe 6 hours over 3 days? It was something I was able to put little bits of time into here and there as I kept it open in one of my browser tabs. The ability to make major and minor adjustments was key to my being able to "complete" the template in that amount of time. I say "complete" because I developed this template as a draft, knowing I would make new templates and adjustments as I figured out what I wanted, what works best for me, and what theme I wanted to go with. So the template I made is only setup for about 3 and half months (from late February to the end of June) and has a fairly basic layout. There are daily and weekly spreads, with monthly calendars and pages for monthly goals, a couple pages for notes, and that's pretty much it. I wanted to make something pretty basic and flexible on the daily pages, to see what I ended up using it for or not using it for, so I could consider adjustments going forward. The short time commitment for this template has also allowed me to learn more about how to use my template in OneNote and ways I might make my next template different to take into account some of OneNote's quirks and features.
All in all, the planner has been helpful in organizing tasks I want to accomplish at work and outside of work, as well as providing reminders and space for some of my hobbies. Now I'm trying to work towards finding better balance between work, supporting others, and doing things for myself. Case in point: my zines. I (laughably) thought I would be done with my manifesto zine awhile ago, but I haven't devoted as much time to it as I thought I would be able to, nor did I accurately predict how long it would take me to do some of the research and to mess with the layout of the zine itself. At this moment I still have 1-2 pages to research and fit into the layout, plus the bibliography. I also have the problem(?) of thinking up lots of ideas for zines but not having (or making??) the time to work on these ideas, despite very much wanting to. Hopefully over the coming months I'll be able to find some balance. With Fall semester being a busy season for my unit, I think I'll be keeping my expectations low for my hobbies then, but I'm hoping this summer I'll be able to indulge in them more!
You can check out my planner here: My first planner
origamiaround
kianamaiart
stormborns
areudirty