Doing the BUJO Again?

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I knew that I would want to return to my long-abandoned hobbies again. Hobbies such as art, lettering, crafting, reading, and all the fun stuff I used to do had been wanting to break out from my (mind) closet. I locked them up in my closet because life happened. The pandemic began less than a year after my father’s passing, too. At that time, I was still adjusting to living without my father. In just a few months, the whole world fell into a life-threatening period.

However, I have been living as a scatterbrain for the longest time, so I knew I had to start a new hobby: creating and maintaining my own bujo. ¹ It would be easy if I would create one digitally, but somehow, even with some personal touches, digital journals aren’t as powerful as the traditional analog journals. You know, journals that involve a notebook, a pen, and some awesome variety of art supplies like markers, watercolor, and washi tapes?

Christmas isn’t here just yet, and I’m already moving forward with my 2025 goals. Building and maintaining a bujo would be one of them.

Why Bujo?

There are a few reasons:

• I am now working as part of a support committee at work that enables me to come up with ideas for special occasion activities. That includes something like free snacks twice a week, decorating the entrance lobby that matches the month’s occasion, such as Christmas, Lunar New Year, etc., and many more related. I take a lot of notes when it comes to breakroom inventories and all sorts of inventories on post-it notes, and even with a standard notebook, my notes are still disorganized.
• After going through almost a month of crafting holiday decorations for our building’s entrance lobby, my hands are wanting an urge to go back to analog paper and pen creativity once again. I was all-out inspired to wrap my gifts with very pretty and stylish gift wrap instead of wasting my money buying gift bags and tissues like last year. I want to craft something in manual mode, and a bujo would be perfect for daily crafting.
• I still am a stationery addict. I requested our HR department to order art supplies from Tombow Glue to Posca Markers, even suggested to check out JetPens and Stationery Pal if none of my suggested art supplies are available on Amazon
• My art Instagram needs some fresh art of some sort. I could go back to using Procreate stamps again and draw something from it, but the hands are thirsting for paper and pen. I wonder if any digital artist out there get these “analog urges” sometimes? Maybe?
• Bujo seems fun! Just creating something is therapeutic for me – from drawing to crafting. Anything that my small hands can create.

When Bujo?

I plan to start the first few pages, namely the TOC² or Index pages. But before that, I’ll be brainstorming for some ideas on what I can add to my first bujo. I attempted to start a bujo back in the beginning of the pandemic, but unfortunately, life had other ideas for me, and basically shoved my bujo idea in my closet because of it. Hopefully, I’d be able to set up my cover page and the TOC/Index pages before the end of the year³.

Materials for Bujo

Because I’m such an addict with online learning, especially with many mediums of art, I already bought all my materials for the bujo back in 2020. The only thing with those materials is that I rarely or never used them. It’s quite sad, actually. Therefore, I don’t need to panic or create a list of must-haves for the beginner bu–journalist.

Here are the materials that I currently have in my bedroom right now:

• Dot-grid notebooks: I even have one that weighs about 160gsm because I also want to do some basic watercoloring
• Gel pens and multiliner pens: Sakura (Micron) pens, Copic Multiliner pens, Staedtler liner pens – I have them
• Highlighters: More specifically, Zebra MIDLINER Dual-Tip Highlighters
• (Optional) Glue: Tombow Mono glue tape, to be specific. It’s an optional item if I wanted to make some collages
• (Optional) Acrylic Paint Markers: POSCA markers woohoo!
• (Optional) Watercolor: Sakura Koi Watercolor Field Sketch Kit and Kuretake Gansai Tambi Japanese Watercolor Set. But first, I need to practice watercoloring again
• (Optional) Stencils: Sometimes, I get intimidated in drawing things from the pen and not involve sketching using a pencil first. Therefore, the stencils would be a huge help

There are plenty more that I have stashed in my closet, but for now, those are the ones I’ll be using. I’ll end up using other materials not in the above list, once I started to get used to maintaining the bujo and inspiration starts to overflow.

BUJO Content Ideas

Here are a few that came to mind:

• MUST To-Do List for home
• MUST To-Do List for work (if it’s a weekeday)
• GOALS for the day
• (Small) WINS of the day
• Online Learning-related notes
• Random art – one page or a spread of two pages
• Books I read, Anime I’ve watched, random YouTube videos I watched, etc.
• Ideas for art
• Ideas for (fan)fiction

Those are just some of the ideas that I have in mind. However, I want to start slow.

Let’s start BUJO!

As of this writing, it’s two days before Christmas. My sister and her family arrived last weekend from L.A. to spend the holidays with us. Therefore, I’ll be spending more time with them and will start the BUJO sometime before the end of the year.

This is it for now. You all have a Happy and Safe Holidays!