Wow, my journal has changed so much. I started out all "I'm gonna conquer the world and this kind of organization is the way that I'm going to do it!!!!"My first pages were all colorful. I drew my own calendar at the beginning of the month. I even got so detailed that I would take the dimensions of the page and calculate how much space I needed for the calendar, or the doodle with me challenge that I was doing that month. I had a page of tracking my habits, a page for memories, and daily pages outlining what I needed to do everyday.
I hoped that all of this would help me stay focused and reach my goals for doing all the things that I wanted to do or accomplish. Despite all the changing my journal has done, using my bullet journal daily has helped me achieve my goals... one day at a time.
I found that by writing out to-do's and goals the day before, or the morning of, that I would have a clear outline for what I wanted to accomplish. I expected that I would feel guilty if I didn't finish what I had set out to do, but I really didn't. I found that it was nice to put a little arrow in the box and move it to the next day or the next week. It was good to see that I hadn't forgotten about it, but realized that it wasn't as important as I initially thought. 
My journal changed gradually. Honestly, I just didn't have the time to spend setting it up the way that I had been doing. It took a lot of time to do all that drawing. I am creative, but I really have to work at it. My months went from 2 pages to 1. My daily pages went from several pages to 1. My trackers were condensed and I tried to keep doing the doodle challenges, but I ended up not even finishing them. I decided that I wanted to start using my journal as a journal as well and not just the mother of all calendars. Plus, I started thinking of my journal as a bit of a keepsake. One day when I am dead and gone, my kids might find my journals and relive their life through my eyes? Maybe they will know me in a way that they never did before.
By the beginning of 2017, I decided to do all my calendar stuff... in my calendar (novel I know). I had a dayspring pocket calendar that I used for everything and I found it was easier just to keep up with all my schedules in that instead of duplicating it every day into my journal. My calendar already had pages for daily entries, I just modified the space a little bit. I used colored pencils (cause it still has to be pretty) to fill in the sections that I completed. I was even able to fit in my daily goals.
Now I mostly use my journal as a journal, I sometimes add brain storming, goal setting, random doodles, notes when I'm out, and the occasional handwriting practice. As I have gone back and looked at the previous pages of my journal, I remembered how much I enjoyed making each page. Honestly, my bullet journal will always be evolving. My goal is to do something creative every day, that might come in the form of doing another doodle challenge. Who knows.
This whole bullet journey has been good, and a great way for me to be organized and productive. Not only that, it has also given me a way to practice being creative daily. So, overall.... I would call this venture a success!
“Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.”
― Dr. Seuss