How are you doing?

How are you getting on as we return to something near normal in the UK?

We went out to meet a group of friends from church in a restaurant last week.  There were 20 of us.  I was quite nervous all day but once I was there it was fine.

My car broke down.  Fortunately on my drive.  I had to get the RAC to come and sort it.  It turned out the computer thing inside in the engine needing resetting.  A bit like turning your printer off and on when it doesn't work!   Apparently lots of cars have had problems in the last few months due to lack of use!

And lack of use applies to my muscles too!

My car was away having new brake pads and so I decided to walk the less than a mile to the hairdressers.  I had to ask one of my neighbours to come and pick me up and take me home because the pains in my muscles was so great I couldn't walk back.

So now I am doing short walks each day to try to get back some level of stamina and fitness.

Our local council has sown wildflower meadow areas in the local park which has made the muscle pain more bearable.  I feel like I'm out in the countryside rather than suburbia.

I'm up to a mile now and learning to walk through the pain.  Each day the pain is in a different muscle.  Soon they'll stop moaning and I'll be able to get back to walking along towpaths.

Preferably ones with canalside pubs!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

G is for Goals

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.  Here are the pages for G.

My word for the year is Commitment, but no matter how committed you are or how focused you are, unless you lay out your goals you won't actually get anywhere.

I looked back to my page on Commitment to see what I had wanted to see more of in 2019.

• Read the Bible more frequently
• Pray more regularly
• Trust God more
• Move every day (walk, exercise etc)
• Create everyday
• Finish things

All of the above are great but they are fairly vague.  And that's the point of goals - they work better if they are SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.  I decided I would set SMART goals for two of the above.  I found a suitable Bible verse and printed it out along with the goals.  I tried various placements on the page until I was happy to glue them down.

I printed the photo out again that I used in my vision board.  I really don't like putting people in my artwork but I need to keep the photo of me when I was slimmer to motivate me that it can be done.  I love Valerie's idea of using some of my washi tape stash so I made arrows with them.  Arrows represent direction.  Then I drew the dashed line to represent walking.

I drew the dashed lines around the typed words.

The pages together.

I'll let you know how I get on with achieving these goals.  I shall start working on them next week.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

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