Year in Pixels
Tags
AI-Assisted, Personal Project
Time
2026
An Ode to My Childhood Hobby
Growing up, my consistent artistic pursuit was bullet journaling. While I enjoyed the daily logging (it gave my 16 year old self a sense of order), the part I loved most was setting up the journal.
At the beginning of each year, I would spend hours scrolling through prompts online, looking for layouts to carry me through the next twelve months. An introspective kid, I gravitated toward reflection prompts, especially a genre called "year in recap": templates designed to help you look back on the year.
Year recap bullet journal prompts - Pinterest
My favorite prompt was "year in pixels." The concept was simple: draw a 12 by 31 grid on a page. Everyday, fill in one square with a color that matched how you felt. By December, you had a piece of abstract pixel art made entirely of your own moods.
When January rolled around, I would grab my black pen, line up a ruler, and draw the grid into my brand new dotted notebook. Filling in a square each night became its own small ritual. Working through this page for a few seconds a day held the promise of a finished artwork at the end of the year.
My Year in Pixels app is a walk down memory lane. It's the modern version of the grid I used to draw by hand, built for people to carry a digital piece of bullet journaling.