My year in pixels - quick journaling in my travellers notebook

I hadn't heard of "My year in pixels" before but I came across the idea in a planner group I am in on Facebook and thought it was great!  Using grid paper you draw yourself a box 12 squares by 31 squares (either vertically or horizontally, whichever you prefer) and then label the 12 squares with the months of the year and the other 31 squares represent the days of the month.

My year in pixels

As some months are less than 31 days long you need to block out the extra days for February, April, June, September and November, I used some skinny washi tape to cover over mine.

You then need to choose some colours to code your moods and feelings and make yourself a key.  I went with purple (joyful, silly, satisfied, content), pink (happy, thankful, motivated, alive), blue (average, okay, uneventful), yellow (lazy, tired, irritable), green (unsure, lonely, sad, insecure) and finally orange (angry, anxious, exhausted).  You can pick as many colours as you like to record your moods, it is up to you and you can decide what you need to label them too.  I just picked ones that would suit me. 

Colour coding

I did label my date boxes but I was unhappy with how they looked so I ended up covering them with some more washi tape.  I have some nice gold date stickers from Filofabulouss which were slightly too big to use here for every day so I used them to mark out the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th instead.  I took the photos for this post before I realised how hard it was to keep track of which day it was without some kind of numbering so you can't see the stickers in them.

I wanted to make these pages fun as I will be looking at them at least once a day so I decorated them with my most colourful tapes and stickers for some added inspiration.  

Mood pixels

Taking a few moments each evening to look back on my day and decide on a colour to represent it is a quick and easy way for me to journal.  I still get the benefit of reflection and a record of my year without the hassle of thinking about what to write and worrying that nothing interesting enough had happened for me to talk about.  I tried daily journaling last year but gave up after a couple of months because I really struggled with things to record and it took up too much time.  I can definitely commit to colouring in one a square a day though so this is a good system for me and if anything really interesting happens then I can record that on another page in my notebook, I am not limited to just this two page spread. 

2017 in my travellers notebook

Had you already heard of my year in pixels?  Do you fancy giving it a go?  You could start it now and record February through to January instead of waiting until next year to begin.  Or do you find it easy to write about your day and have plenty to say?  I might write a second post about this later in the year to let you know how I am getting on with it and show you all my pixels.

Thanks for stopping by!