Progress Report

Example of mood tracker using bullet journal system, photo from Pinterest.

As promised at the end of my last post, this week I will be discussing how I track my progress. Around the turn of the new year I was seeing a lot of blog posts and Instagrams about bullet journals. I'm aware that the concept has been around for a while but it seems to have taken off recently. If you search for 'bullet journals' on Pinterest you'll see dozens of beautifully illustrated pages that have been painstakingly planned ahead of time. People go to town on their journals using various pens, fonts, doodles and numbering the pages. Despite being a creative person myself, I couldn't get my head around spending hours on setting up the structure of the journal. I respond best to simple plans with some kind of easy to read visual scheme, which is exactly what I created for myself. I decided to take the general concept of the bullet journal; using a dot paged journal and creating a code to easily decipher progress in various topics.

My main areas that I wanted to track included my mood, quality of sleep and daily activities in terms of fitness. Each page contains a view of the entire year ahead, each square represents a day and is coloured in at the end of day according to how it went, whether I had insomnia and how active I was. Over time I can see patterns emerging such as how my activity levels drop if I've had a period of insomnia or a number of low days in a row. I decided to also created a two page view of each month to show how many steps I was wracking up and summarising what I got up to each day. I have to make a note of what I've been up to as my short term memory is terrible. If I forget to sit down and fill the pages in, I really struggle to think back on what I did a few days ago. For the step count pages I've been writing down the numbers provided by my Fitbit. At the end of each month I total up the steps and compare how well I've done against previous months. So far the total monthly step count has increased each month which is brilliant.

Using this type of journal has been a great way for me to track my progress. It also shows how well I'm doing in terms of meeting my fitness goals. I've always known that I experience a particularly bad period of insomnia each month and this has helped to outline when it happens. I love that I can see so much information from month to month on one page. I also find these tables a great way of keeping track of various chores I need to keep on top of such as when did I last change the bedding or clean the bathroom as well as things like when I last gave the pets their flea treatments or whether it's time I changed my toothbrush! I definitely recommend giving it a go, it isn't too late to set one up either!

  

Head Down

Some people might question my commitment to being a mental health writer as I was silent across all platforms during mental health week. A lot of people I follow on Instagram and Youtube utilised the time to spread messages that support the movement against stigma and silence of mental illnesses. It surely was the perfect opportunity for me to do the same, particularly as the occasion coincided with my usual blog upload day.

Unfortunately my illness doesn't care for what day or week it is, even if it might be the perfect opportunity to post a true account of the pain I experience during a low period. I can begin a week with a seemingly great plan for writing, filming and exercising only to end up diving head first into my duvet. A week spent editing my video on my breast reduction surgery (see it here) that occurred last Summer has put me into a strange head space. Of course the operation was a fantastic moment for me, I was finally taking the steps towards boosting my body confidence and self esteem after feeling trapped in a body I wasn't comfortable with. It's allowed me to push my body beyond what I thought it was capable of in terms of fitness.

However, as I was editing the video I couldn't help but think that I haven't progressed much further since the operation. A week after the operation we were having a party, I was reunited with friends from university and we talked of work and my plans for my book. I've previously said that I would kick myself if I hadn't got everything together by this Summer. It might not be here just yet but it is looming and I've barely touched the pages in my desk draw. I've spent years working through events that transpired long ago, coming to conclusions on how they impacted my mental health and actions. Writing it all down comes easily enough to me, but reading over it all and attempting to put it all into chapters is incredibly overwhelming. Many people who attempt to write their memoirs often fail because it ends up being so damaging to their emotional and mental health. So imagine attempting to do so when your mental health is already in tatters. Despite the pain and frustration of it all, I know that it's something I desperately want other people to see one day. Creating things is what keeps me going and makes me excited. There will always be days when my head goes down, but it will pop up again when I'm ready. I seem to be constantly battling against society's ideas of what progress looks like and what I've learnt; that it takes many forms. Check back in two weeks time for a post on how I track my progress.

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