The "Keeping" of Habits

The majority of the new years resolutions I mentioned back here involved keeping in some form. "Keeping" being the idea of recording, on paper, in a way that is meaningful to you, the truth, beauty and goodness that has been inspiring you lately. It could be quotes in a commonplace book, flowers drawn in a nature notebook, french verbs in a language notebook (what, french is beautiful!) or names on a timechart.

I love keeping, both the idea of it and the actual practice. Maybe it seems silly to specify both of those things but there are some other things that I love the idea of, but then I do it and it falls flat (like having a wonderful home binder with pretty forms for every occasion :-) ) This keeping isn't like that, this really does feed my soul and inspire me. And who doesn't need some inspiration when stuck in a small house with two energetic kids in bitter cold January? Ahem. So I love keeping. I've slowly started different forms after reading The Living Page last year but these are also resolutions for a reason, I need a bit of help making the keeping become habitual, hence the resolutions and my plan for what I'm calling, meta-keeping.

I'm decided to take the "Don't expect what you don't inspect" parenting advice and apply it to myself and will be tracking my resolutions in my bullet journal. I started a bullet journal back in December and so far, I'm loving it. It's very similar to what I've done that has worked in the past but just slightly more organized. And my brother got me a lovely moleskin journal to start the new year with which is even more incentive. While there are lots of different bullet journal tweaks (just search pinterest - or don't, you'll eat up hours :-), most of my bullet journal is exactly what that video shows. But I did want to share my resolution pages.

The four resolutions I'm really tracking here are

• Commonplace (2 entries per week) - my timechart is tucked into my commonplace book so while I'm not logging anything, the only time I don't update it is when it isn't handy. I just hate stopping my reading and getting out of my nice warm bed to go get it so if I'm updating my commonplace, then the timechart shouldn't be an issue. It's only been a few weeks but this is already working. More than once I've underlined or highlighted something that I wanted to include and right as I'm convincing myself that I'll add it later even thought that means I'll forget where it is and never get around to it, I stop and do it right then (or as soon as I can sneak away from a sleeping Jonah if I'm reading while waiting for him to fall asleep). 
• If I get a BOC for my birthday (HINT HINT kind and generous husband of mine. Follow this link, Leather please!) then I'll keep it with my commonplace too and may or may not feel the need to log entries. I don't think I'll have a problem once I get over the fear of "ruining" my book but that's all conjecture. I've got space to add boxes if I need to.
• Exercise - self explanatory and not really about keeping
• French (1 check for every 10 Duolingo points IF my french notebook is updated with any new information) And yes. I've already missed a check box. In my defense, we were all sick last week.

• 1000 hrs outdoor - I'll be tallying the time on my daily page but adding it at the end of the week to my chart.  This is very sad right now too but again, the sickness. But today no noses were running and it was not bitterly cold so we went to the nature center for a hike and then played outside in the afternoon so once week three is over, that will go up to at least of 2 hrs! 2 down, 998 to go :-)

And the bottom left of the first picture shows the space I left for monthly check-ins for me to just write a bit about how I'm doing and what I think I need to re-prioritize. I could have made a one big chart but I really wanted to keep them separate so I could focus on each as a individual habit instead of a big "how to make MacKenzie a better person" type of chart. That's not my goal.

Head over to Joyous Lessons for her Keeping Company Link-up to see other ways of keeping.