I had mentioned in my previous post that I was a bit of a journal junkie. And I thought I had made my peace with that. I thought I had a system. I had my bullet journal, my morning pages journal, and my commonplace book. You know all this; I just wrote a post about it.

But a minute after I made that post, I hit upon this hashtag: #onebookjuly. And I thought, Oh? What’s that?

Well. The idea is that you start the month of July with the basics:

One Book. One Pen. See where it takes you.

And I read that, and thought to myself, Oh hecking darn. Because that’s what I originally wanted, was one book to rule them all hold everything – my planner details, my journal, my commonplace quotes. And here was this challenge, daring me, double-dog daring me to do it. Could I resist this challenge? No way! I would do it! One book, all of July! Let’s see if I really do need a multiple book system! So I agonized over which book would be my One Book. It took a while, but I ultimately decided to use my Scribbles That Matter A5 notebook:

I made the choice because it’s the best journal of the bunch – all the thoughtful details of a Leuchtturm 1917, plus a few more on top of that, with the GSM 100 paper of a Rhodia webnotebook. If any journal in my collection was up to the challenge of being my everything book, my STM was it.

But I had another problem, and I lay the blame squarely on Goulet Pens having Inkapalooza and putting their ink samples on wicked sale! I bought a double handful and they are making their way to me now, and I had planned on sampling them by writing my commonplace quotes and morning pages in different ink, while holding on to the all-black minimalism of my bullet journal.

But now I’m set to go one book, but I have all this ink…

So I decided to compromise by flipping my usual habits. Instead of multiple books, I would use one. And instead of one pen, I would use many. And to celebrate that, I created bullet journal spreads! I spent a ridiculous amount of time on these.

First, I made a 6 month log, and wrote down all my deadlines and scheduled my major projects:

I decided to make everything pop a little bit by making my saturdays and sundays red. Anything with a gray highlighter is a serious deadline/commencement date. I have timed everything carefully, so I can work on project A, come to a natural stopping point, and then work on project B.

Then I decided to do something a little different for my monthly 2 page spread:

Goals is new. Right justifying the dates was just to shake things up.

And now something I’m not sure I’ll keep: a weekly spread (this one has 8 days, just because Singleton Saturday makes me sad.)

I saw that manner of separating the page with the cursive and the “steady hand” underline and I loved it so much, I wished I used weeklies. So I thought I could try it, and see if it works for me.

So that’s my journal challenge for July! Are you trying anything new with your journal this month?