July 2020 Bullet Journal Setup

This is my first month in my new journal! It arrived from Archer & Olive just in time so July’s spread is the first time it’s been used in anger (apart from the main journal- which I mostly copied across from the earlier spreads I blogged about.)

I’ll go on about how lovely the paper is etc. at a later date but for now, I’ll just deal with my July setup as it’s a bit different to how I normally approach it!

First of all, I’ve gone for a travel theme- which has been completed with a very random colour scheme so far. I decided to go for travel given that I’m going to be spending the majority of this month in transit in some form so it’s personally appropriate, but also a reminder of the last three months of being confined to a very small area that the world is still out there and that someday travel will be easier again; even if that takes a while.

After trying the traditional vertical monthly log in June for the first time in several months and not particularly enjoying it, I’ve gone back to the much more visual calendar layout for July. I like how the calendar layout allows you to see patterns easily- for example if you had a regular weekly commitment. Obviously, I have very little planned so far for the month as I will be spending a significant portion of it in quarantine but hopefully, it’ll get some use as the month goes on.

This is probably the biggest change from my normal monthly setup. I decided moving into my new journal that I was going to have a go at doing monthly mood trackers. In my current journal I’ve been using a year in pixels spread which while I like, I’ve had quite a lot of trouble actually remembering to fill it in daily- and then you have to think back and try and remember how you were feeling several days earlier!

I’m hoping, given that I’m normally really good at updating my monthly habit and stat trackers daily, moving the mood tracker to be a part of the monthly setup will help to make it routine as well. Given my travel theme for the month, I was initially a bit stuck on how I should approach this tracker but I had the brainwave of an aeroplane seating map and I really like how it’s turned out- particularly that each day’s box is large enough for me to add several moods rather than just sticking to one- as that was another issue with the year in pixels spread.

In any other month, the second page on this spread would be dedicated to my habit trackers, but this month, given I am travelling and will be quite limited once I am in quarantine, I have decided that I am going to approach habits on a weekly basis for the first time so I can be flexible depending on where I am. This page I am therefore dedicating to ideas of what I’d like to do and how I’d like to spend my time once in quarantine. As you can see, ideas are pretty thin on the ground so far (any suggestions would be greatly appreciated) but I think dedicating some time every day for exercise and having a screen break will be really important so they are my first inclusions.

Finally, very similar to my June set up, I have my sleep and blog trackers. I’m honestly not very sure how else I’d set up a sleep log so I’ve stuck with the same simple layout and may use something slightly different to mark off each day- but you’ll have to come back for the end of month summary to see what!

My blog spread is also the same as June as it worked fairly well, although I think in July I’m also going to ensure I include blog posts on my weekly spreads as I have been quite slack in getting them out over the past month- which I did forewarn you about- but given the amount of spare time I’m going to have over July (you’ve seen my calendar, I can’t tell fibs there!) I hope to be posting far more regularly, perhaps not daily, but more than twice a week is the aim.

What do you have planned for July? As I said earlier, any recommendations for what I could do for my two-week quarantine would be greatly appreciated so please drop me a comment with any ideas!