Calendar juggling!

So, it's become somewhat of a tradition now, for me to talk about calendars at the start of the year.  Calendars have become a pretty big part of my daily routine, and even in the larger world, I am seeing planners and planning systems getting more attention. 

I used a planner in high school, we got one every year, a student planner printed by the school, to help us keep up with homework and projects.  I didn't make very good use of mine, but I did like to scribble in it.  Then, for many years, I only used a wall calendar.

In 2015 I bought a monthly desk calendar.  My intention was to use it as a chronicle of my year.  I was going to write down my daily rune draw (which I did), as well as a thing or two I learned each day (which I only did for a month or two).

I have found, that if I don't plan my life, I get very little done.  When I don't pick and choose what I want to do in a day, I tend to fiddle around with stuff, and at the end of the day, I will look back and won't feel like I accomplished anything.

So, in 2016, I bought another monthly calendar, but this time I decided I needed to take more charge of my life, and I was going to plan my days, writing down things for me to do each day, to help me stay on track.  I did okay with this, but some days there just wasn't enough space in those tiny boxes to write down all the things I wanted to do!

I was trying to plan all aspects of my life:  my writing, my community building, my spiritual life, my home life, my exercise plan and even my leisure time.  I wanted to keep track of everything, to keep myself on point with all my plans.  I had been looking at all these different ideas for planners, and one that fascinated me was Bullet Journaling.

It's a really interesting system, that includes both a lot of flexibility and a lot of room for creativity.  Best of all (for me), it embraced lists and checking off boxes...both of which are things I adore!

My calendar for 2017 was a grid composition book, that I used in my own take on Bullet Journaling (also known as BuJo).  But I knew I wanted a longer look too, so I bought a basic monthly desk calendar, clipped the pages out and taped them into my planner.

What I learned last year was that I am not so great at actually planning long term.  I would wake up in the morning, and sit down at my desk to decide what I needed to do that day.  When I thought about things that were coming up later in the week, I would add them to those days, but I rarely remembered to look any further than that!  I also wasn't as good at checking back in with my calendar throughout the day, so some days I was really on task, and some days I didn't get to check a lot off, because I didn't check to see what I was supposed to be doing.

This year, I am using two planners, which is creating another layer of complication!  I bought the "Planner for a Magical 2018" so that I could keep all of my Year of Magic plans together in one place.  I considered a couple of different planners, but I really liked this one as it has nice amounts of space for daily stuff, as well as a monthly calendar.  And, it has pages for each of the Sabbats and magical inspiration for every month of the year.  Plus coloring!

Then I have my catch-all planner, another grid composition book (because the dot-grid fancy planners that are suggested for Bullet Journaling are quite pricey, where I can get a composition book for a buck...the blue lines really don't bother me much at all).  I do decorate my composition books with Washi tape, because it's addicting stuff!  And it helps keep the book together with all the daily usage.

One of the big things I like in my planner is divination for the year.  I do both a moon cycle based divination with WomanRunes, but also a tarot spread for the year.  I keep this in my planner, so that I can refer back to it throughout the year and see where I am at.  This year, I am also choosing a WomanRune each new moon, as my focus for the upcoming moon cycle, so I add that in as I pick it.

I have been very good so far this year, at grabbing my planners in the morning, after I have done my morning routine, and planning out my day as I drink my coffee.  I haven't been doing this at my desk, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, my desk is devoted to my computer, and there just isn't enough space to write comfortably in my planners.  And secondly, when I am sitting at my desk, I am too temped to try to do other things (like check Facebook or watch videos on YouTube) while I am planning.  Instead, I sit at the kitchen table, where I can focus on what I want to do that day.

One of the first things I have found that I struggle with, in this new system, is my daily divination.  I draw a rune every morning, as well as a WomanRune card.  I always draw my rune before my morning meditation (as I use it as part of one of my meditations), but I used to draw the WomanRune as I was planning.  Now, I have to remember to draw it when I pick my rune.  And interestingly, I have to remember to add my rune to my daily planning page (as I have been forgetting).

Not only am I juggling two physical books to plan in, I have several different ways in which I am tracking and planning.  I do work with a traditional calendar month, as most of my family stuff falls by the weeks of the month.  But I have been working with a Moondial for several years now too.

This is one of my Moondial pages.  I have a template that I trace each moon cycle, to add the wheel to my planner.  The outer part of the wheel tracks the calendar date, and the moon phase, while the inner part of the wheel is my own personal cycle.  It is very interesting to me to see how these two interact, and I am wanting to pay more attention to my energy levels and how I feel based on how they line up (because, of course nothing is ever simple, and every full moon cycle, I shift about a moon phase backwards in my personal cycle).

One of the things I am also wanting to work on this year is planning my work load based on these two cycles, so trying to look at where I'm at on the wheel and either be more focused on rest and self-care or on action and getting stuff done.  This is something I've been wanting to work on for a while, but last year I only remembered when a deadline was due, and I was in a low energy place and only wanted to nap!

On the opposite page of my Moondial,  I do a divination spread for that moon cycle.  Last year, I did a monthly divination, but this year I decided to use it as part of my moon work, so during the new moon, when I am opening myself to the energy of the coming moon and letting inspiration fill me, I do a reading to help me sort out where I want to go.

The workhorse of my long term planning is these monthly pages in the Magical planner.  I haven't put a proper monthly page in my BuJo planner.  I felt that having two monthly pages would be just too much, and way to repetitive.  As the Wolf moon, the full moon of January, started it's cycle in December, I didn't start my full moon planning until the second moon cycle, the Hunger moon.  But I used that first couple of weeks to try out how to mesh these two calendars. 

I ended up writing the same thing three different places at first!  I was using these monthly pages to plan what I wanted to do with moon phase work, which would then get transferred over to the daily pages in both the magical and BuJo planner!  And that just felt very clunky.  So, when this new moon came about, I instead used this monthly page to plan the moon phase in broad strokes:  what kind of things did I want to do, and then the daily page turned those broad ideas into specific actions.  This is working much better for me!

You can see my monthly page is color coded, which is one way I keep the moon phases tidy in my head.  I like them outlined like that, so I can easily see, at a glance, where each phases is.  I made a little key, in my BuJo, a quick reference of the phases and how I work with them, and I colored it, so when the new moon comes about, I will mark out all the phases in my monthly page.  Then I can look ahead through the current phase, and see what I want to do and when.  Plus, I really like how the color adds to my monthly page!

This is an example of the daily pages in my Magical planner.  I use little bubbles here, that I fill in when a task is done, and also have been writing down an affirmation for the day, related to what I am working on. 

Once I have picked my actions for the day, I will sit and color something on the page (or on one of that month's pages, if the daily page is already done).  If I am struggling with figuring out what I want to do on a particular day, I will color first, letting my mind chew on the problem while I color.  This has been working out quite well for me.

From there, I head back to my BuJo planner, and lay out the regular tasks.  This year I have gone much simpler, with just big open boxes for each day, and one at the end for weekly tasks (which is anything I know I want to do that week, but don't know which day I want to do it on yet).

I like lists and order, and ticking things off, so my rules for tasks are pretty much anything that takes more than five minutes should get written down.  Definitely anything that I absolutely need to remember to do.  But even simple stuff, things that I am not in danger of forgetting, that only take a small chunk of time, I write down.  I do this for two reasons.  Firstly, it gives me the sense of accomplishment to tick it off.  And secondly, even those little things add up, and if I have a day where I have a dozen little things that need to be done, I may need to lay off of other things, to avoid getting overwhelmed.  I even write down 'cook dinner' if it is going to be a meal that will take more time than usual to prepare.

This is a nifty little tool that I just started using this year.  It's a habit tracker, and it does exactly what it says:  tracks things you want to make a habit of.  I used to write most of these things down on my daily pages, but it took up so much space!  Things that I aim to work on every day, now get put here instead of on the daily page. 

There are a couple of exceptions.  My writing, I will schedule specific tasks or scenes that I want to write in my daily planner, because those are particular things I want to write, where the habit tracker I count any writing at all for it.

I also use my habit tracker to watch for patterns.  I want to see how often I do things that I don't do every day, like my freelance captioning work or posting to Patreon.  I also am interested in seeing how things like whether hubby is working or not effects my sticking to my plan (hint:  I am much more likely to play more when he's off...so now that has become part of my planning).

It sounds like a ton, but it really doesn't take me that long to do in the morning.  And I am really liking having this time to set my intentions for the day.  When I carve out the time to mindfully plan in the morning, I am much more likely to get all the things done in the day that I wanted to.  This includes not only the things I feel I should be doing, but also the things I want to do.  When I want to play a game or read a novel, that gets added in, so that my brain knows that the time is there for me to do these things, and that I should be doing them!  Self-care is very important, and planning on doing things that I want to do is a big self-care thing for me.

My calendar and planner system has been constantly evolving, for years.  And I expect it to continue to evolve.  I have some books that I am planning on reading (which is of course being tracked in my BuJo planner!), which I feel will deeply impact how I plan.  And that, to me is highly exciting!  I love that I can remain organized, but also change that system as I need to, or as I uncover new information that changes me!