“Something has to happen…” This is what I said to one of my teaching colleagues at school regarding the level of stress, burnout, and fatigue that we were all experiencing.

I have said this in previous years, but now going into a full two years this March of teaching in a pandemic, alterations need to be made to my strategies of self-care that are realistic and adjust to the new normal of teaching and motherhood. My life has changed in a multitude of ways in the past two years.

1.) Virtual teaching and the Covid-19 pandemic created an atmosphere where we lost boundaries we never had. Teaching moved itself into our living rooms. We taught with our children on our laps, in our living rooms, and with dinner cooking during staff meetings.

2.) I became a mama. Now with an almost toddler, I am still trying to navigate my schedule on a daily basis as a classroom teacher and what that looks like after bedtime.

Classroom teaching has remained unchanged. It is just as hard as it was before, but my overall tolerance for inadequate systems is becoming something that can’t be ignored anymore. When we moved back to in-person learning, the education system as a whole tried to hold on to the things that were good about virtual learning, but we quickly fell back into old habits, routines, and schedules. We lost the social-emotional learning aspects of teaching that were so important and needed for so many children. But, we also remembered that realistic self-care wasn’t just wanted for teachers; it was needed. This post is a declaration of boundary-setting and some strategies I am going to propose regarding setting actual healthy boundaries with the profession of teaching as a whole. I am beyond wanting band aid fixes. I acknowledge that I do not have all of the answers, but one thing I know is clear: I can’t keep doing business as usual.

One of the things that I love the most about bullet journaling and the bullet journaling system is that you can combine your want-tos in life with your have-tos. I’m talking about your work stuff, your appointments, and your to-do lists with your dreams, your passion projects, and your ideas. You can use your one notebook as a planner and the same notebook as a journal for your thoughts. You can do your morning pages right next to your grocery list. You can mindmap a project, and then on the next page draw a doodle or two. You get what I am saying.

With me returning from maternity leave in April, I hesitated to go back to what I normally did which was plan one month at a time. One of the biggest things I hear from people when they look at bullet journaling from afar is “I don’t have time for that.” If you are a person who is trying to balance life and also balance how you feel AND your dreams…I don’t know how you are managing without some help. Notebooks are a big help if you have the right systems in place that work. So, knowing that I wouldn’t have time to plan on a monthly basis, I extended my journaling method to a 3-month or quarterly basis setup. Basically, this one notebook is going to get me through the 1.) first three months back from maternity leave 2.) the end of the school year 3.) quarter two for my blog.

This post will walk you through how to set up a notebook 3 months at a time. Are you a business person? You will use 4 notebooks for the year (one for each quarter). Are you a person with long-term goals? Set up check-ins for every 3 months. Are you a person that is struggling to try to find balance in all areas of life? Use a 3-month notebook to get yourself on track.