Her poetry might not be structured, but her bullet journal sure is!

Beaver Area High School freshman Erica Majors has been writing since she could pick up a pencil.

In her younger years, Erica loved to write short stories and narratives. But in recent years, she has discovered a love for poetry.

Erica even has had some of her work published.

“With my stepdad’s photography business, if people want quotes on top of their pictures, I’ll write something for them. He mostly takes landscape and animals, but sometimes he gets booked for weddings,” Erica explained.

Erica finds time to write whenever she can and often writes before bed.

“I usually write to get my feelings out,” Erica said. “Writing poetry helps to get things off my mind, and it helps me relax,” she said.

Erica enjoys a free verse style of poetry, meaning that words do not have to rhyme or have a set rhythm to them, but rather they flow like natural speech.

“It’s like telling a story, but you don’t have to have a plot or characters and you can just say words and they’ll make sense to someone. Rupi Kaur’s poetry is my favorite. I just like the way she writes,” shared Erica.

However, Erica doesn’t necessarily see a career in writing—but could see it being a life-long hobby or a way of making a little bit of cash in her future.

She also enjoys bullet journaling, which has become recently popularized by online “bullet journalists.”

Bullet journaling became popular in 2013 when Ryder Carroll, a Brooklyn-based digital product designer and art director, shared his journaling methods on a blog, and it took off from there. Carrol was born with a learning disability which made it hard for him to take notes and keep up with other students in school. He developed his own system of journaling in order to keep track of his assignments.

Erica discovered this type of journaling while perusing Instagram and stumbled upon some pictures of journals filled with colorful highlighting and pen.

“Basically, my bullet journal is a schedule, or like a planner sort of thing. Honestly, it helps so much because I love to make lists of things I need to do, and writing it all down helps me a lot.”