A Year in Pixels – The Ultimate Mood Tracker

I Love Trackers

I don’t know if you know this about me, but I love trackers. Well, trackers and logs – I don’t discriminate. Either way, I’m a sucker for collecting data so I can learn more about my patterns and habits. That knowledge is key to changing your life because you can’t know what to change or how to make the change if you’re working from incomplete data. That’s why I decided to create a Year in Pixels chart so I can have a bird’s eye view of my moods and emotions!

Materials Used

• Leuchtturm1917
• Dr. Ph. Martin’s Hydrus Watercolors
• Loew Cornell Palette
• Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens
• Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens
• Pentel Aquash Water Brush Pens
• Zebra Mildliners

A Year in Pixels

The Year in Pixels chart was created by Camille or @passioncarnets on Instagram. While the scale of this mood tracker is large, the concept is deceptively simple. To set it up, you need twelve columns for each month of the year along with 31 rows for the days. That means that there are exactly 365 squares, or pixels, for you to track your mood!

Once you have your chart created, you need to create a key. Your A Year in Pixels can track as many or as few moods as you like – I kept mine pretty sparse with only seven moods. I decided to commit to using my Zebra Mildliners in my A Year in Pixels chart for the whole year, but you can use whatever pen you want. Just make sure you can easily tell the colors apart! Remember, you want to be able to see patterns at a glance, so similar colors may end up being confusing.

Creating A Year In Pixels

You might be wondering why you would want to keep a mood tracker like A Year in Pixels. Well, there are a few reasons that you might benefit.

For people with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues, it can be an excellent way to track symptoms and episodes over a long period of time – either for themselves or to share with their doctors. I know I have been struggling with my mental health as of late, so focusing a bit more on my daily emotions is one way to take care of myself. You can be caught up in a bad mood or bad mental health day and think that your whole life is bad. But if you keep a Year in Pixels page, you can look at your patterns and see that maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems.

Keeping a mood tracker is also a great way to see if your moods come on a certain cycle *ahem – ladies know what I mean* making this spread a great pairing with a period log. Knowing when your mood patterns come and go means you can plan and prepare ahead of time. If you know you get stressed out during a certain day of the week, time of the month, or time of the year, you can take extra care of yourself during those down times. Or you can plan a day trip to lift your spirits, get away, or grab some precious alone time.

A Year of Self Care With A Year In Pixels

I have been struggling with my mental health lately, along with my work-life balance. I know these two are connected, and I am working on both in the coming months. But I know that keeping this A Year in Pixels chart is going to help me find the balance I need to live a healthy life. Knowledge is power, and this is the ultimate mood tracker to give me insight into the wild animal that is my mood. Every bit of information gathered is one step toward achieving my goal of a healthy mind and happy spirit.