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coffee with a slice of life
Monday brought a small dose of the rain we’ve been missing in the South Carolina upstate – and, in its wake, a rare cool summer afternoon. My partner B and I drove to Clemson after lunch, to work and enjoy the weather out on the porch at our favorite coffee shop. We got to catch up with a friend who’s still living in the area, work, read, and write as summer passed slowly in low gray clouds and intermittent sunshine.
All In coffee shop – Clemson, SC One of the things I miss about living in a college town is how the local cafes are intended to let patrons spread out books, laptops, notebooks, highlighters, etc, and study for hours; designed with generous tables and many power outlets. I could make this setup with my bujo materials and not feel out of place, or like I was putting out the workers by taking up a table for so long.
It was serene and relaxing to unhurriedly enjoy the sensory pleasure of slowly filling my journal with spreads. The rhythm of stamping out headings, the firm pressure of stamps against the inkpad and then, after carefully lining it up, against the thick, creamy paper. The sound of gently turned pages in my hand. The satisfying whirr of correction tape. My pen sliding against the smooth grain of the paper.
“well behaved boys rarely make history” – I’m filling my monthly title pages with quotes from me and my friends. This was something I said bantering with B that I thought was hi-larious, lmfao It’s been a long time since I’ve dedicated much time or attention to writing in analog form, and I’ve never been very intentional about the materials I used. It’s amazing what a difference it makes. I always liked the aesthetic of writing in notebooks, but was disappointed in the actual experience. My hand always got tired, my handwriting would grow messy near the seams or bottoms of the pages, and there was so much pressure to choose the right words and constructions, since I couldn’t go back and make major edits.
I still don’t think I’d write long fiction by hand, but so far journaling has been wonderful. It’s a deeply resonant form of happiness to be able to be present and take genuine joy in something that always looked like it should be a pleasure, but never was in practice.
That’s been a longstanding theme in my life, truth be told. Even before social media made this a growing source of angst in a lot of people’s lives, I was always a fantasist who longed to have beautiful experiences like the ones I saw in film, or pictured from my books, but seldom could take much enjoyment in the reality, which always passed to quickly, was too uncomfortable, or unromantic, for me to truly luxuriate in. I can long for a beautiful past or future, but in the present I’m nearly constantly plagued by some small discontentment or another.
I have a hard time really feeling cozy. I rarely can get to a place where I’m content and just vibing with my surroundings. Especially at home.
Hendersonville, NC Honestly, it’s really strange to see an idea that had always hovered in my mind as something I needed to do become popularized on TikTok and other platforms that cater to “aesthetic” sensibilities. A desire to romanticize your own life. That was always a need urging me somewhere in the background of my pursuit of writing, and especially in blogging. But it’s been a long, incomplete journey trying to get to a place where my writing is honest, and I can romanticize and believe in the importance of my reality as it is rather than trying to use overly ornate language to try to paint over the truth and present myself as some imagined ideal that I, simply, am not.
I need to romanticize who I truly am, not try to turn myself into some romanticized character by pretending long and hard enough.
B, Spring 2010 There’s a line I wrote in a (as yet) unpublished haibun of mine that feels like something I need to tell myself over and over.
There’s a simple truth in your living, just as anyone’s.
“dropout” – Ash Evan LippertSometimes the messiness of life, and my life in particular, feels unbearably oppressive. It can be so hard for me to be creative when things around me aren’t just right, like I can’t tune out the ugliness around me and create something gorgeous. Like I need to input beautiful experiences to output beautiful results. Obviously this isn’t true. (It’s real enneagram type 4 bullshit teebs).
I like bullet journaling so far because it helps me focus on the process, and the pleasurable satisfaction that can be found in sorting through chaotic mess and slowly forming it into some kind of order. Making a list. Checking off boxes. Small steps. Piece by piece. That’s what I need.
me, Spring 2010 -
signs of life
My journal and most of my supplies got here! Since tomorrow is the beginning of August, it’s the perfect time to get started.
I got a Paperage recycled dotted grid notebook with a natural kraft brown cover so I could stamp the cover and note the dates on the spine. Hopefully by a few years from now I’ll have a modest stack of these boys in chronological order.
Stamps! I’m using these for the headers and things so my spreads can have a little extra bit of visual interest without me having to worry about coming up with creative designs, which frankly I don’t want to spend my time doing.
These are the spreads I’ve included at the front of the journal so far. I’ve got a wish list I’m going to organize alphabetically by author, that way when I’m perusing bookshop or library shelves I can know what to keep an eye out for based on where I am. I’m putting a key at the bottom of the last page so I can highlight titles based on genre, and track books that are a top priority, those I’ve purchased, and those I’ve read. The goals section is just to help me keep a handle on the different areas I’m working on in my life — because I tend to hyper-focus on one project at a time to the detriment of everything else in my life, until I get completely burned out, and then abandon it for something else I’ve been neglecting. And never come back to it. This is the big thing I’m hoping the bullet journal will help me fix. Aaaand I’ll fill out the key and index as I write.
Here are the stationary supplies I’m using!
Pens! I’ve got a black Muji for my regular writing, these cute multicolor cat pens for different headers, and a gel pen to add gold accents and lettering.
Highlighers – Zebra Mildliners, and some aesthetic pastel pens for when I wanna go for an extra soft look.
This adorable ‘delicious pine nuts’ eraser (lol) wasn’t very functional, but I’m hanging onto it because it’s sooo cute and it’s too late to return it haha. I replaced the animal erasers with these tea-scented ones that come in this pretty packaging. They smell so nice! And they actually work! I’m into it.
Some of the post-its and sticky tabs I got. They’ll help me transfer notes from what I’m reading into the journal.
This set of correction tape packaged to look like different flavored milk bottles! These might be my favorite thing here. They are very cute and satisfying to use.
Washi tape for decorating and adding some scrapbook materials.
The other thing I worked on today was my new filing system to help me track my haiku submissions. The more I write and send out, the harder and harder a time I’m having with my digital filing system that I’ve been using in google docs. I think it’ll help me a lot to be able to comb through them physically and compare poems side by side to select them for submissions and, perhaps someday, a full length poetry collection.
Plus they look so gorgeous written out on the cardstock notecards!
I’m going to use color coded highlights and borders around the numbers to denote important information for sending pieces out to journals, such as the ‘tier’ I rank the poem in against my body of work, whether the haiku has ever been posted on social media, the season of the poem, and whether it is a traditional haiku or a senryu. I’m also going to sort them into sections based on how experimental they are.
So! That’s where I’m at! It’s been a productive day, but now I’m beat. Tomorrow I’ll finish setting up my bullet journal and hopefully actually start filling it out! It’s crazy that tomorrow is both the start of a new month and a Monday isn’t it? It seems the fates are telling me to DO THE THING and FINISH SETTING UP BY TOMORROW!
I’m optimistic.
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pit stops, dead ends, and new paths forward – the road mess traveled 😉
Why is being organized so hard?!
wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut My first round of supplies came in the mail. Hooray, pretty objects!
My toes tingled with materialistic glee – that feeling hovering right between excitement and panic – as I unboxed pastel pens, mild highlighters, thick lead mechanical pencils, an array of aesthetic sticky notes, fresh stiff reams of dot grid paper, kawaii erasers and correction tape, washi tape (!), a pencil case and ruler to fit in a 5A binder, and my binder notebook! There’s so much sensory pleasure in assembling a new binder and filling it with all the bits and bobs you picked out, and so much potential. Very back-to-school September cool blue skies cold dew wetting the hem of your new jeans grass stains on your Sketchers composition books full of crisp new pages waiting to be filled backpack bobbing under your optimistically high ponytail.
notionssss And then you get to school and bam bullies mean teachers homework homework boom pop quiz your locker’s full of moldy sandwiches and you didn’t get the part in the winter play and you’re like I was happy why now???
This pattern has been repeated so many times in my life I have a hard time not giving into it before I’ve even really tried to Not.
But I’m going… ok. My first big roadblock is that after being so excited about my binder idea, I’m not actually that into the binder. I couldn’t find an A5 with rings thick enough to hold more than a hundred sheets of paper, and even with that few, it’s really hard for me to open and close the rings while keeping all the pages in. Add my cute lil pencil case and ruler to the mix and it’s just not ideal. So I gave in and ordered a notebook. And also better erasers because it turns out the really cute ones barely function as erasers. And also some Muji pens because it turns out ditto, except sub pens for erasers. And I also needed a set of highlighters with much more variety in the colors.
Palm to the face. Repeated palms striking my face.
But no. It’s fine.
I’ve been using this time to practice making spreads, so I can get my inevitable fuckups out of the way, and to figure out the best layouts that waste the least amount of space without being cluttered. Stuff like that. And figuring out exactly which spreads I’m going to include, and in what order.
wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut This is really hard for me? None of the tutorials I watch explain that this is hard – like even minimalist bullet journals. Maybe it’s not that hard for most people. To my brain it’s like calculus. (And in case you were wondering, calculus and my brain do not get along very well.)
Nevertheless she persisted.
pretty highlights are the highlight of this experience so far. aha.ha.ha. -
something simple
This blog is going to be focused on my journey into bullet journaling. I’m the sort of person who’s romanticized keeping a diary, and physical writing, since I was a kid, but I’ve never managed to keep an analog journal for more than a few entries. When I launch into a new project I always bite off more than I can chew. Then I burn out quickly.
Theoretically bullet journaling can help with that. The risk is that it becomes just another project that’s too daunting for me to stick to. If you’ve stumbled across the “bojo” subculture on social media or elsewhere, you’ve probably seen that even the journals their keepers deem simple can be very artistic and complex for what I figure the average person could fit into their lives. Obviously, the people with the best, most organized journals will be the ones most likely to amass an audience who likes watching their amazing organization porn.
I think people generally find these videos calming and satisfying, but it brings up a lot of anxiety for me. When I see all the kinds of spreads and materials people are creating, it’s overwhelming as someone who doesn’t want this to become something that takes up even more of my time and emotional energy. I just want to learn to juggle and prioritize all the stuff I should be attending to as someone who’s working from home in like 3+ different non-lucrative fields at once.
I want simplicity. When potential tasks pile up too high (and it doesn’t need to get that high for me to balk at it) I freeze.
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So basically my goal here is to document what works and what doesn’t as I try to set up a minimalist (but still aesthetically pleasing because I’m a hedonist who can’t function around abject ugliness!) bullet journal.
The reason I’m making this blog public is so those who, like me, are intimidated by the bujo process, can follow along step-by-step with someone who’s similarly bad at organization and visual stuff. I want to break it down bit by bit and record the process. That way, you have something to refer to, and you can see that it really did take a lot of small steps before I (knock-on-wood) got to a journal full of ephemera.
I’d love to meet others in the community, or who are just getting started, so we can work towards our goals together.
Once my supplies are here, I’ll provide a full visual inventory and document putting the journal together, and filling up the first pages. As time goes on, day by day, week by week, I’ll post some simple photo-updates of my progress, along with anything I learn along the way.
CAGIE A5 Refillable Faux Leather Traveler Notebook Binder Journal One big decision I’ve made while shopping is that I’m getting a 5A binder notebook rather than a traditional journal. This minimizes some aspects of the process that trigger anxiety for me. I can add extra pages where I need them, remove ones I mess up, and use some premade inserts so I can dive into the journaling part of the process asap. I’ll let you know how this decision works out for me. Theoretically I think it’s something to consider if you’re afraid of messing up or stuff becoming too disorganized. (pictured above)
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Anyway, I’m ordering said supplies as we speak, and they should arrive later in the week. In the meantime, I want to lay the groundwork for me to be successful in actually starting the thing once it gets here. And in enjoying the process instead of feeling stressed by all the micro-tasks involved. So I’m going to document, for now, what I want to get done with the journal, and narrow down the spreads and designs I’d like to start with.
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Quick intro – I’m Ash, a poet, would-be novelist, house husband, and novice at life. If you’d like to see my creative work, you can visit my writer’s blog wanderstruck reverie, find my (sometimes) daily haiku and micropoetry on my twitter @mossinsnow, and some graphic and video short poems at my insta – @noble_worrier – TikTok – @mossinsnows. My bullet journal is largely going to be focused on balancing my different artistic pursuits – the ones that can earn me money in the short term, the ones that might lead to (ideally) paid publication, and the ones that are solely for my enjoyment.
Keeping up with books and journals in my field is also a big part of my job, and it’s something I always put last because it doesn’t feel productive. I’d like to dedicate a reasonable number of hours a week to this, and documenting what I learn, along with poems, passages, and authors I fall in love with.
Social media is also another huge weight. I’ve been jumping back into that recently, and it’s been depressing. Because while a lot of it can give me some creative satisfaction, and I love sharing my work with people and finding my way into communities centered around pursuits I love, it can easily spiral into such a time-suck, and a source of anxiety about your “brand” and whether you’ll ever actually be able to turn your talents and passions into a living. It becomes a big long-term creativity killer. So I never end up sticking with it long. But now I look back and I think, damn, if I had actually run my twitter account even intermittently since I began it in 2012, or posted occasionally on the Instagram I started around the same time, I’d have gained so much ground just by showing up. I wouldn’t be furiously playing catch up now. That’s why this time around I need to learn to schedule a reasonable amount of time to pursue my goals on different social platforms. And then, most importantly, to put it aside and let myself fall into the warm blanket of my real, private work.
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Now I’m just going to jot down some notes to reference when I make my journals initial setup (probably over the weekend)
LONGTERM GOALS
- CREATIVE
- novel-writing
- forever under heaven
- research
- mood boards
- military
- religion
- setting
- daily life
- edit manuscript
- block out scenes
- write prose passages
- research
- the apple prince
- daydream
- refine characters
- how do conflicts intersect?
- plot arc/resolution
- forever under heaven
- where the light gets in
- the great man theory
- daydream
- refine characters
- how do conflicts intersect?
- plot arc/resolution
- novel-writing
- poetry
- write
- journal submissions
- collection
- taking classes
- LEISURE
- topics to learn about on youtube/podcasts
- Masterclasses to watch
- reading list
- novels
- journals
- nonfiction
- poetry collections
- music listening list
- television list
- places to visit
- LIFESTYLE
- chores
- exercise
- diet
- cooking
- sleep
- socializing
- skincare
- organization
- in-person hobby groups
- plan/prepare for move
- WORK
- fiverr
- upwork
- microtasks
- google certifications
- resume
- romantic fiction
- job search
- etsy/polymer clay
- SalesForce
- SOCIAL MEDIA
- blogging
- tiktok
MONTHLY GOALS
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
HABITS TO TRACK
MENTAL + PHYSICAL HEALTH
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Oh boy. That already felt intimidating. But I’m glad I got it done. This is going to make making my first entries so much easier.
If you’re a bullet journal-er, someone curious about journaling, a messy artist type who could benefit from some organization, or you just wanna hang out, please follow along! Come say hi, share any tips, experiences, whatever, introduce yourself:) I’m happy to meet all of you.
I’ll be back soon, probably to post any spreads I want to put in my journal, and inspirational links. Until then, pls b saef
- CREATIVE
small seasons
the year passing in a single breath
small seasons 