Slowly but surely….

I am adding some unexpected interest to my digital planner.

I’ll state this up front, the actual digital planner was not created by me. This planner was offered in the Friday Freebies on Boho Berry’s Digital Planners Facebook group. I have only made slight alterations to the planner so it will work for my personal use.

It first started when I decided to add a tracker for my bible reading. Then I thought I would try adding the daily weather. Things progressed from there.

These are my pages for yesterday and today, without my journaling. I inevitably fill up the white space with journaling about my day and my thoughts. I should tell you now, the artwork is NOT mine.

The graphics for the weather came from a Friday Freebie on, you guessed it (if you read my previous posts) Boho Berry’s Digital Planner Facebook group.

I did create the box with the list in it and the trackers at the bottom. Thanks to someone in the same group sharing how they could easily create trackers in a spreadsheet, copy them and paste them into their digital planner.

The flower on the list and the background fox image came from a coloring app I use on my phone, called Happy Color. After I completed coloring in the graphic, there is an option to share it so, I sent it to my computer and pasted it into my digital planner.

I really loved how the flower looked in my planner yesterday so today I decided to see how the images work in the background. It worked AMAZINGLY!! So now, I can capture some details about my day without having to say anything, by choosing one of the pictures I color that day and placing it into my planner.

None of this is difficult to do. Some of it requires using a couple different applications. I had a few obstacles to overcome, like acquiring Affinity Designer. If push came to shove, I could have done most everything in my older version of Adobe Photoshop Elements but the process takes far longer and is much more complicated. I discovered Affinity has all its products on sale so I jumped on it and gave it to myself (a few days early) for a Christmas present.

I did have one issue in trying to figure out how to make the background of the images transparent in Affinity Designer but a quick google search took me to the Forums on Affinity where someone had already asked the question and received an answer. Again, it is a very simple process. It was just a matter of finding where in Designer it could be done. This wasn’t one that would have been intuitively obvious. I might never have found it if I hadn’t searched online for the answer. Once learned though, it is quick and simple and I don’t have to use a magic tool to click in all the small areas where I want the background transparent.

There is at least one huge difference between Adobe Photoshop Elements (I have version 10), and Affinity Designer. Affinity Designer will import a PDF file and build layers. If I open a PDF file in Affinity Designer it shows a dialogue box where you can import ALL pages or select a page to import. I usually select one page. Designer builds layers for each element in the page. How quickly Affinity Designer does this is amazing.

My version of Adobe Photoshop Elements does NOT build layers. It opens a single page onto one layer which means there are NO elements which can be altered.

The layers Affinity Designer creates are great because each element is given a layer. I can then select an element and alter it if I want to change part of it. For instance, in the digital planner, if I want to change the text on a tab, all I have to do is select the text and change it. Same with the tab, if I want to change the color, I can do that as well. I can alter the shape of the tabs or any part of the page.

In Adobe Photoshop Elements, I’m either stuck with the shape and design or find a way to put a layer over it to cover it with what I want. Adobe Photoshop Elements is also VERY slow in rasterizing the PDF file.

I know this functionality of creating a layers from a PDF file so all the elements can be altered can create an ethical dilemma for designers. When I first came across digital planners, I wanted to know how they worked. Knowing how they work, also helps me to know what software was needed to make them work. I needed to know this because I was wanting to use them on my Windows desktop, not an Android table or an iPad. Watching some of Boho Berry’s videos gave me enough information to find some software to play with but it took a lot of searching to find the RIGHT software for the job I wanted them to do.

The other thing watching her videos did was help me to understand the planners are built by using layers upon layers to achieve the effect. I wasn’t sure how deeply this went until I discovered Affinity Designer. Breaking a single page down into ALL of its layers gave me the information I needed.

These planners take a lot of work to build. What Kara and others have built took a lot of time. Seeing all the layers in Affinity Designer for just one page makes me appreciate all the HARD work the creator of the planner did to develop it.

Affinity Designer enables me to alter an existing PDF to make it the way I want it. But it also opens up a possible ethical situation if someone should use it to take someone else’s design and change a portion of it and then call it their own. As an artist, I would never do that. It bothers me immensely when I hear of other “artists” taking someone’s work and either not crediting the original artist and letting people assume they own it or altering it slightly and then claiming it as theirs. They are not artists in my opinion.

I may one day attempt to create my own digital planner. If I did, I would create it from scratch. But right now I’m just happy to be able to use a planner someone else built for my own personal use so I can determine whether this is a daily practice I will continue with or if it will peter out like it did when I tried creating my own bullet journal. Working with a bullet journal lasted maybe six months before it became old.

I had, also developed an issue with my wrist due to all the handwriting I was doing. Switching to using the computer to type out my journal digitally has allowed my wrist to heal. I,also, learned the benefit of being able to keep up with my thoughts through typing. Many of my thoughts wouldn’t end up on paper because I couldn’t write fast enough.

I am an interesting balance of analytical/logical and creative/abstract. This becomes apparent when I consider what I’m drawn towards. I love math, especially algebra and geometric shapes. I think things through logically. I’m always wanting to create things with my hands. I knit and crochet, draw, paint, write stories and poetry along with my journaling. Once I learn how to do something I then find ways to tweak it, especially in my handmade items, like knitting. Computers have enabled me to combine both worlds which is why I think digital planners/journals will be my forever “go to” for expressing myself.

If an app is ever created which will allow a user to work completely within one app with their digital planner, I can see using these digital planners by everyone from church leaders/pastors to, business leaders, government aides and even children with their school work. I have been able to incorporate pages into my planner from a Bible in PDF format, have a blank page opposite where I write my notes, highlight the bible text, circle, underline and add supporting pictures and whatever else someone does to make it stand out. AND… it is all searchable in the PDF document once it is saved, including any annotations and notes. This can’t be done in hand written notes or hard copy books. I can add links to the PDF document as well so a reference can be found easily. In essence, these planners are becoming archival information of people lives and the knowledge they gather for themselves.

WE ARE CREATING OUR OWN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.

For someone who didn’t excel in history class, I find this fascinating.

 

 

I’m making progress and learning something new every day…

Every day, I’m learning something new on this journey with my digital planner. I find new and exciting ways to work with it. There are a number of things I’m finding out, like certain applications can make the PDF file cumbersome. I worried about someone being able to alter or delete what I had written since my writing was mostly done as annotations. This is basically a journey about discovering the limitations of certain applications and the never ending abilities of another application.

For instance, some limitations I ran across:

• Adobe Acrobat Reader (free version), allows for annotations but doesn’t allow for entering text upon the page.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements, allows for importing text from a single page of a PDF but is very difficult in designing graphic elements I want to add.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (free version) and Adobe Photoshop Elements doesn’t allow for adding links, internal or external.
• Adding text in Xodo to a PDF is purely annotation, which means the text is editable in PDF viewers that support annotation.

I needed the following:

• my writing/journaling to become permanent within the PDF document, so it can’t be altered later in PDF viewers
• Elements and graphics need to be permanent within the PDF document especially when in viewers
• Be able to annotate/highlight/strike-through, etc to my writing/journaling and imported text from other sources and have it recorded/searchable in the PDF document

This still takes 3 applications but the way it is done is now completely altered and will make my final journal/planner more functional and permanent as an archival artifact.

I was up late last night playing around with this change in my process and this morning I successfully used it for my morning Bible study. By the way, it was one of Boho Berry’s digital journal videos which gave me the idea for the change in my process. Here is my page from my Bible reading this morning, using the free planner mentioned in my previous post:

The bible text comes from a free downloadable NLT bible in PDF format. The planner is one of the free digital planners I’m using. If you bother to take the time to read my notes and reflections forgive me for the personal content. I am a bit nervous in sharing it since it is so personal but I wanted to show how versatile a digital planner can be (without blurring stuff out) for so many things.

I wanted to have the chapter in the bible next to my notes and reflections. With the change in my process I am now able to highlight not JUST the scripture but I can also highlight my notes and color code them to match so I can easily find the verse which supports the notes I made. This is very much like what I’m doing in my journaling bible by hand but now it is all digital, AND in a PDF document which can be searched so I can find any references I might be looking for. I can read it in a PDF viewer, like any PDF document and search ALL content.

Below is a couple pages from another free digital planner I will be using in 2019. I found this planner “Sirena” through the Friday Freebies in Boho Berry Digital Planners Facebook group and is by Chanel Fana. The original page looks like this:

I altered it to look like this:

I learned I don’t like To Do lists when I started working with a bullet journal. Whether I did them daily, weekly or monthly, they were too repetitive and made me feel like I was a failure because I didn’t complete everything on my list and often pushed things out several weeks or even months. Therefore, I changed my list to “What I Did Today” which makes me feel a whole lot more accomplished and productive.

In order to track the things that are time sensitive, I will most likely create a page with those time sensitive items listed so I don’t forget something important that needs done. I’m good at keeping these things in my head but occasionally I need reminders.

The year at a glance original page looks like this:

I altered it to look like this:

One of the reasons I altered it was because I didn’t have the fonts used by the creator so when I imported the PDF into my application, the font defaulted to the Arial font which also altered the way the dates lined up and appeared. The other reason I altered it was because the weeks in this planner started on Monday and my week starts on Sunday. This planner also has monthly calendars I will also need to change and I’ll probably adjust the daily pages as well just because my dailies are really just journaling about my day.

It might be obvious to some but not all, why I am not just creating my own planner or using the planner as it is. When I started, all I wanted to know was whether it was worth my while to use one but I needed it to function for my needs. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t like it and wouldn’t stick with it, so finding one already created was a simple way to find out without having to go through creating all the graphics needed to make it LOOK and FUNCTION like a digital planner, especially since I’m working from a desktop computer and not from a tablet or iPad. iPad seems to have an abundant of choices to use for digital planners, while the desktop (Windows) is fairly sparse, unless you want to spend a crap load of money. I had to find out how feasible it was.

Finding the free digital planners was a God send. In the first day or two I was able to play with them in their original format just to see if they were functional on my system with apps I had or could afford.  Since it was functional, the rest was about whether I could alter it for my needs. There will never be a planner exactly the way I want it to be, digital or paper, so altering it is a necessity.

Since I’m not selling the planner and only altering it for my personal use and the planner is free, I felt I could share one or two pages here so you could get an idea of what I’m writing about. If you are interested in this planner or the other one above, I recommend joining Boho Berry Digital Planners group. You can find them in the resources provided in the Friday Freebies.

I am SO VERY GRATEFUL for the digital planners which people have created and share freely. Doing so enabled me to explore digital planners without spending any money since I wasn’t sure if this would be something I would stick with. I also wasn’t sure if I could find software within my price range which would allow me to do the alterations I needed for my purposes. The digital planners I have come across are reasonably priced so I might find myself buying one at some point in the future, if I don’t want to create my own. Even so, I would still have to alter a purchased digital planner for my personal needs.

As it turns out, I only need to purchase one application and it is a one-time fee under CA$70, unlike many applications today which are cloud based and now require monthly/yearly subscription fees. For someone on a restricted budget, I am so thankful I can still find applications I can download and use on my computer. I totally get the need for cloud based applications but I feel these companies are doing a disservice to those who don’t need it or are restricted financially. Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox. lol

You might be wondering how much time this takes compared to a handwritten journal/planner or just using MS Word like I was using. There is, of course, a learning curve which means it will take some time initially to learn how to work with the digital planners and which software/apps you prefer to use. The time it takes to learn depends upon your current skill level with the computer/tablet/iPad you are using and how comfortable you are with working with and altering graphics.

I do recommend trying several different applications (you can usually download free trial versions) if they are within your budget. I have some older software programs to experiment with which I purchased when I had the money. These programs are now cloud based so I don’t have the more updated software. They were enough to use for comparison with other programs so I could determine which programs worked best and whether I wanted to spend the money to upgrade any of them or buy a different one. Discovering a far less expensive program was another God send (it was mentioned in the Facebook group by someone). This program is much easier to use than the more expensive ones which means it greatly reduces the time to learn it. It also means once I’ve learned it, the time to create my pages from beginning to end is fairly equal to if not better than making them by hand. I was only using the bare nuts and bolts of MS Word so it was no where near as pretty. Any increased time in my planner to create beauty makes my artist’s brain sing with joy.

I was able to do my morning bible study in the same amount of time I was doing it before when writing my reflections in MS Word and adding my notes in my journaling bible. This can easily replace that process without increasing my time with that task.

My daily journaling may take more or less time depending on how creative I get. Even if it takes a bit more time, it will be worth it because of the added benefits I get with having it all in a searchable PDF format. I can’t stress this enough. Granted MS Word is searchable but I had some in MS Word and some in handwritten form. I went to MS Word originally so I could ease the strain on my wrist when I was doing my morning pages. Then I realized I could search it when I wanted to refer back to past entries. But my bible studies and my calendar which has my appointments, work schedule and bible reading noted in it, was handwritten. These were not searchable which made it really difficult to find anything I need to go back and reference. I tried indexing but that didn’t help. Plus, I can have all my journals in one place.

What can I say, I’m a digital girl at heart, and it turns out I was wrong. Digital planners/journals ARE for me, they satisfy my artist, writer and analytical minds.

Well, here is a bit of an update. I discovered if I save my PDF in Xodo as a flattened file then all my entries I made in Xodo are made permanent and can then be selected to be highlighted, underlined or other things. It also reduced the size of the file significantly. The good thing is I can still open the PDF up in my graphic designer program with all its layers in tact.

Okay…. so….. I’m learning more than one thing in a day…..

In case you are wondering, the graphic designer program I found is called Affinity Designer. Every time I work with it, I’m amazed with its functionality.

The three programs I’m using on my Windows 10 computer for working with my digital planner are:

1. Xodo
2. Affinity Designer
3. Foxit Phantom PDF

I tried a few others but these gave me the functionality I desired and are within my budget.

 

 

I’m going digital, more than ever…

My life took an interesting turn. An unexpected turn. Have you ever just come across something which catches your attention and you think, “Oh, that’s interesting, I’ll take a quick look”, even though you have no plans to use it or do whatever it is that caught your attention and suddenly find yourself sucked into a deep rabbit hole like in Alice in Wonderland?

Well…. that was me this past week or so, and I think I’m still there. 🤪

So here is what happened.

I was quietly and systematically working on cataloguing many of the resources I have available to me and often loose track of, so I started listing them in a spreadsheet. I am subscribed to numerous YouTubers for various reasons, so I added a spreadsheet to list them and their area of expertise so I could easily find some videos on particular topics I want to review or learn. In the process of cataloguing them, I would scan their list of videos so I could appropriately categorize them. Well, of course, inevitably, I found myself staring at a video which set off all sorts of bells and whistles in my head.

I can’t really say I haven’t been at least partially digital because I do most of my journal writing digitally. Manually writing can cause a flareup in my wrist which can become very painful. I have been using MS Word for my journal and though I can do a lot in it, I often find myself feeling like there has to be a better way. I tried OneNote and Evernote but didn’t like them. I like MS Word because I can search easily to find something I wrote about and wanted to go back to. Besides running into a repeated issue which bugs me, I also know eventually Microsoft products will go out the door on my system because they are no longer in my budget. Things like this is always working in the background of my thoughts usually waiting for something to trigger a new idea. This is what happened when I saw the title of the video, “Creating a Digital Journal with Boho Berry Freebies”.

The video is only 10:23 minutes long, but it is chock full of helpful information. I don’t have an iPad. I do have an iPhone but I wouldn’t do something like this on my phone. I would probably go blind trying to see what I wanted to do because of the tiny screen. This video did one thing. It sparked the neurons of my tiny brain and sent me down a path of trying to find out if anything like what Kara showed in the video could be done on a Windows desktop computer.

And BAMB! down the deep dark rabbit hole I plunged.

First, I joined Boho Berry’s Facebook group “Boho Berry Digital Planners” so I would have access to other people who do digital planners and see if anyone is using them from a Windows platform. Let me tell you, there are, but not very many and it seems they had just as many questions as I did. I started to discover working from a desktop may not be as user friendly as it is working from an iPad, at least for digital planners. Also, it looked like, I would have to be willing to spend some money for some of the apps mentioned by others, which right now I’m not. My funds are limited so I wanted to see what I could do under these limited conditions.

Since November 28th when I ran across Boho Berry’s video, I have had moments of great frustration, and moments of “Ah.. Ha”s and moments of “by gosh, I think I got it!”. To only run this repeatedly over the following days until I arrived at my destination today.

First, I need to say that I’m doing two types of journaling. The first is a very minimal bullet journal, where I have a month calendar, a daily “What I did today” and then anything I want to write about my day. The second is my bible journal where I make notes about my daily bible reading and my thoughts regarding what I read and how it applies to me. I needed a solution for both of these.

You might wonder why I would move away from actual paper journals and notebooks, especially with my love of creating journals. I started originally writing in physical journals and I always had the same issue: FINDING SOMETHING I WROTE AND WANTED TO REFER BACK TO. Even if I did indexing which I tried to do when I first started to bullet journal, my indexes wouldn’t be intuitive enough to help me find what I one day wanted to search for. This is why MS Word became my “goto” for journaling. Since using MS Word, I have been able to successfully find every entry I wanted to refer back to for whatever reason by using the search option.

Here is what I felt I needed in a digital journal:

• all content had to be searchable
• it had to be easy to add text to
• text had to be easily formatted
• had to be able to add calendars
• calendars had to be editable
• graphics had to be easily added
• had to be able to add and edit internal and external hyperlinks
• it had to be appealing to look at
• PDF format, this has become a universal format which can be read from most applications and various platforms, the format has to be viewable years down the road

What I discovered is not one single product could do ALL of these things. Even Kara (Boho Berry) has to use two or more apps to accomplish what she wants to do in her digital journal.

At first, I didn’t think I would ever switch to a digital planner like the one shown in Boho Berry’s video. But I investigated anyway. The main reason I was investigating was to find out if something similar would work for what I needed.  I looked at the planners Kara has but didn’t want to pay for one without knowing if I could use them on my desktop computer.

I searched for free digital planners. There are a few out there and I found one I decided to test with. This one I found through the Friday Freebies in the Boho Berry Facebook group. I knew working with a free digital planner would require more work than one I would pay for but I also knew I would learn a lot more by altering things myself than buying one with all the bells and whistles.

My biggest obstacle was finding programs to do what so many videos show you can do using an iPad. I will tell you this was the most frustrating part of my research. Especially, since I didn’t want to fork over any money or a lot of money. Adobe could certainly do the job but so many big software companies have switched to cloud based applications with monthly or yearly subscription fees. Fees I can’t afford. I’m still old school. I want to buy a software program that costs me a one-time fee and have done with it and run it on my computer, not on a cloud where my data resides on someone else’s hardware.

It took some work but I was finally able to determine there is a way using my Windows desktop computer to create, maintain, update and enhance digital planners in a PDF format. What is even better, I can do so inexpensively. Once I figured out the process, it is also easy to do, though like Kara,  I have to switch between two or three applications to make it all possible. Here is what I can do:

• create a digital journal from scratch
• alter an existing digital journal (PDF format) or use it as it is
• copy/add/delete/insert pages, either from existing pages in a journal, blank or newly created from scratch
• add graphics
• add/delete/edit hyperlinks (internal locations and external locations)
• create my own layouts, or add layouts others have created
• add/format/delete/highlight/underline/etc. text
• use various fonts already available from my computer
• search ALL text, including any annotations I made or text pre-existing in the PDF document
• view digital planner from PDF viewers including Adobe Reader (also searches text and annotations)
• insert calendars and add text and images to the calendar
• create lists like ToDo list

I am sure I haven’t touched on everything that can be done. The hardest part was finding a program that would provide the ability to add hyperlinks. Here are three of my spreads I have created. I have blurred out some of my journaling for personal reasons:

This first image is my daily journal, as I stated, I blurred out my writing for personal reasons. The “What I Did Today” is an image I add to the page and then fill in with text as I do things during the day and I use the marker tool to color the box green to show it is completed. The rest is all free formed text I write throughout my day.

This next image is my December calendar. The calendar came in the free digital planner without dates, no text or images (just the lines creating the boxes). All the images I added are images (free for personal use, there are too many to quote sources, they can easily be found searching Christmas images on google) I found on the web. As the month progresses I add hyperlinks to the date so I can quickly go to my daily journal page. For instance, for December 5th, I can click on the 5 in the calendar and I’ll be switched to the page displayed above in the graphic for my 5 December daily. I enter what chapter of the bible I studied that day and insert a link to go to the journal page for my bible study (my bible study journal and daily planner are in the same file together. If I click on Job 9 & 10 for 6December, I’ll be taken to the next image below.

All graphics were found online and were labeled as free for personal use.

For my bible study, I found an NLT Bible online in a PDF format that was free for personal use.  I only discovered today, I could separate out the chapter I study and insert it into my digital journal so on one page I have the scripture I’m reading and the opposite page is blank where I can add my notes and thoughts for that day’s reading.

Discovering I could insert bible pages into my journal for my bible study was the “cat’s meow” so to speak. It is the frosting on the cake, as it were. I haven’t done it here yet but I can also highlight or underline the scripture text, and I can also add arrows or pointers from my notes to the scripture. The highlights and arrows can be created in different colors, so if you like to color code your bible notes, it can be done here as well.

Dare I say, I am IN LOVE with digital journals! The calendar gives you an idea of how creative someone can get in the journal. I could add my own artwork (digital or scanned copies) or search online for art to make my planner as beautiful as I want it.

Other than one program, all the editing done to create these pages was done via free software. I am still deciding whether to purchase the one that is not free. Even so, it is under $70 and a one-time purchase (not a subscription).

It didn’t take long to switch to this digital journal format. I had planned on starting the new year by trying out the digital journal but the bug had embedded itself deep. On 2 December I decided to just start trying it out for the month of December to see if I even liked it. From that moment on, I didn’t go back to MS Word, except to refer to what I had already written there.

The last day in my MS Word journal where I did any journaling was 1 December at 12:45am (so technically 2 December). What had finally inspired me to not wait was a bug I have run across in MS Word which bugs me and it happened two times in two days. The first time it happened I ran the repair option and it fixed the issue. The next day when it happened again, I tried the repair option and it didn’t fix it. The issue I’m mentioning is where the cursor doesn’t reflect on the screen the movement associated with the space key or the enter key. If I press the space key, the cursor doesn’t move. If I press the enter key, the cursor moves about two spaces to the right, not to the next line. When I start typing the cursor will jump to the location it is supposed to be in and the letters appear where they should go. This is frustrating because I rely visually on the cursor to be where it is supposed to be, if it doesn’t move as in the space key being pressed, then I’m pressing it a second or third time and end up with too many spaces in my sentence, or too many lines between paragraphs if it is the enter key. This is frustrating when someone is trying to enter data quickly which I do when I’m journaling.

I have read possible fixes to the issue which requires copying the data into a new document but my journal in MS Word for 2018 is 540 pages as of 1 December, so yeah, not doing it. With the digital journal, I will watch for any issues with the file getting large and possibly split it into quarterly or half year journals.

So yeah, now I’m digital. My calendar and bible study notes were all in paper journals, now they will be digital journals. I’ll still have real journals but they will be art journals. This takes the pressure off of me to have journals for writing. Now they can all be used with various mediums to create art in ALL the physical journals I have.

The great thing about digital journaling is once I have a planner I don’t really have to purchase another one. Keep the original file untouched. Use it as a template, then create whatever you want out of it. I won’t have to buy paper anymore to write on. My need to be creative on paper will be satisfied by my art journaling. My daughter will have a digital record of my life that she can literally put in her pocket. My need to be creative both digitally and physically is met.

The only thing I feel is missing in the digital journal is the appearance of turning the page. The software I use doesn’t do that. It also doesn’t swipe because I’m not using a touchscreen like the iPad has. The image may look like a book but it doesn’t mimic page turning. Maybe one day it will.

If you are interested in learning more about how I created my journal and pages, leave a comment below.