That one lady at the coffee shop who showed me her 2018 bujo

I was sitting at a Starbucks near downtown Portland last fall and this woman next to me pulls out a beat up Leuchtturm. It was falling apart, tape everywhere, pages falling out. She saw me staring at my fancy new dotted notebook and just laughed. She told me she started bullet journaling back in 2015 and her first 3 notebooks were total garbage. But she said something that stuck with me: a bujo is supposed to look used, not be a museum piece. It actually made me stop caring about perfect spreads and just let things flow messy. Anyone else have a moment where someone basically gave you permission to stop trying so hard?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith_king17d ago

Haha oh man this brings back a memory. I had a total stranger at a bus stop once tell me my notebook looked like it had been through a war, and she meant it as a compliment. It was weirdly freeing to realize that all my frantic perfectionism was just getting in the way of actually using the thing. Anyone else feel like social media has made us forget that notebooks are paper, not glass sculptures?

wells.olivia17d ago

Loved what @emery_white said about a beat up notebook being a flex, it really is. Maybe it's just me but that lady basically showed me that the whole point of a bujo is to capture life as it actually is, not a curated version of it. It's like people forget that Ryder Carroll himself said it's supposed to be a tool, not art. I mean, we all start out wanting those perfect spreads from Instagram but the real magic happens when you stop caring and just let the pages get messy and real.

emery_white17d ago

Oh wait, that's not quite right actually. She probably started in 2016 since that's when bujo really took off. But yeah her point totally stands. Also a beat up Leuchtturm is honestly a flex, means you actually used the thing.