FOCUS, my 2016 One Little Word

In my last post I shared my lofty goals for this year, which include doing Project Life and One Little Word, along with organizing my life with the help of a bullet journal. This post is about my pages for January for One Little Word 2016.

I’ve started AND completed the January portion of One Little Word. (Note: I started AND finished something!!) 

First, I had to choose my OLW. It wasn’t difficult this year. I used last year’s word – FOCUS – because I sure didn’t use it last year. Oh, how I need FOCUS in my life.

After choosing my word, my next step was to go shopping. I can focus just fine on shopping, so I figured why not start my focusing journey with a successful experience?

What to buy? It seems a lot of OLW folks make their word visible throughout the year by wearing it on a bracelet or necklace or by having some artwork that features the word. I found several Etsy shops who sell such things. I ordered a “salvaged word” from one of them. I’ll show it to you after it arrives.

I bought my bracelet from Mudlove for two reasons: their products are very reasonably priced, and every product purchased provides one week of clean water to someone in need in the Central African Republic. Read about their story here. Here is my bracelet:

 

Side note: I noticed on The Bachelor this week that Bachelor Ben is wearing one of Mudlove’s bands. His says “hope.” That’s not the best show (it's mesmerizing like watching a train wreck), but it’s good advertisement for Mudlove.

After choosing my word and buying stuff, the next step was to figure out the format for my monthly OLW pages. Most people make a separate OLW album. Some people include the pages in their Project Life albums.

I chose neither of those options, because I prefer to reinvent the wheel. I’m putting the pages in . . . (wait for it) . . . my bullet journal!

This is my year to have one place for all my notes, lists, and journaling. I’ll still be working on PL scrapbook albums and on Bible study journals, but everything else will be in my bullet journal.

The OLW pages will be the first thing I put in my bullet journal each month. Win/win! I love my bullet journal so much that I WILL do my OLW monthly pages the first of the month so I can get right into setting up the month itself.

The class materials for OLW include various cards and worksheets to fill out. To aid reinventing the wheel, I measured my bullet journal pages (they're about 8 inches by 5½ inches). Then I made a generic template that size in Photoshop.

I had to do some reworking of the cards and worksheets to make them fit my template. I also jazzed them up a bit, because that’s what the other class participants did. I ended up with four pages for January. They're below.

First January page with some prompts completed:

 

The word “focus” is by Rhonna Farrer of Rhonna Designs. The rest of the cursive words and the stars are from Ali Edwards. The photo is my current Facebook profile picture. It was taken on my birthday while I was holding an overflowing platter of pancakes freshly made by my son Blake. Who wouldn’t have a smug smile when possessing all the pancakes?

Second January page with some more of the prompts completed:

 

The photo on the bottom is from our stay in Destin. I used it to fill blank space, because I didn’t have anything to say on the bottom. And if I think really hard, I can make it fit “FOCUS.” The sun certainly aids focus by keeping the world visible. Those lights provide direct focus on the pier where they’re located. Most importantly, the colors coordinate well with these pages.

Third January page, which started out as a worksheet, but I digitally made it into cards for consistency with the other pages:

 

The font for the title of each card is Floraless Regular. The text is my handwriting that I had made into a font. The lens thing with FOCUS in the center is what I made for my OLW symbol. I found the lens image by googling “lens images.” I’m very clever like that.

The fourth and last January page, which also started out as a worksheet:

 

Here is what the first two pages look like after I printed them and glued them into my bullet journal:

So, there. I’ve made my OLW project public. I hope this will help keep me accountable for following through with this project. And I sincerely hope to learn to FOCUS.

Are you keeping a bullet journal or pursuing a word this year? If so, I'd love to hear from you about your experiences. If you’re interested, I’ve started a Pinterest board for One Little Word: Focus.

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. If you made it all the way to the bottom of  this post, you really have perseverance! I'll try to keep future posts shorter.