One Little Word 2023

Continuing my search for my focus word for this year, I had another chat with Mary in Messenger. I also picked up on the idea in the video I shared in my last post about listening out for a word or words that repeatedly catch the attention.

Amazingly, the word {connect} kept cropping up.  One of the times was when I was watching a programme about Charlie Mackesy who wrote the The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.  Bear Grylls spoke about Charlie's sculptures showing connection and also said 'where there's connections there's always strength'.

 
I started thinking about connect and connections and then realised that I had chosen {connect} in 2017.  At the time, as I told you in my previous post, I was using Ali Edward's workshop, but had only got as far as March with it.   You can see how I got on, in these posts: January, February, March

I'm determined to do better this year.  To become more connected to my word!  More connected to my Creativity, to my Community, to my Well-being and to my Identity (which includes my faith).

There are several people in the One Little Word Facebook group with the same word.  I set up a subgroup for them all so that we can all be connected.  Good start for our word, I think.

I am not going to make a separate journal for my word as I did back in 2017.  I'm going to include it in my planner.

The week of December 26th to January 1st was in my 2022 planner and in the new one for 2023.  I didn't want to copy the 2022 page so I did this instead.

I went back to my box layout from 2022 and tweaked it for this year.  I've cut these boxes out and stuck them into my planner.

It takes quite a while to set up a new planner/journal but I am getting there.  Some of it was even ready for January 1st.

I did however manage to get the pages ready for this week.  I started with the pages that sassiecassieplans did on YouTube but deviated because I like more boxes than she does!

I've still got things to do in my planner for January but at least I've started.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Word of the Year or not!

Happy New Year

I have been choosing one word for the year for a while now.

Over the years since 2011 I've chosen
Restore, Focus, Present, Participate, Thirst, Purpose, Connect, Gratitude/Thankfulness, Commit/Commitment, Walk, Intentional and More.

Looking back, many of the same things to focus on each year, come up time and again whatever the focus word.  In fact when I look at what I wrote for {More}, I could use most of it again this year with one or two tweaks!

So what's the word for 2023?

At first it was going to be {self-care} but I like to find quotes and Bible verses and really didn't think think there'd be many appropriate scriptures.

Then I thought maybe I could use the word {Balance} - as in a well-balanced physical, spiritual and creative life.  Basically self-care then!!

Then I moved onto {Identity} because as I told you I have signed up for the Essence of Identity Course.  Also Identity in Christ is a key foundation of my church and is the current teaching series.

However!

I am also very aware that I get really excited about having a word for the year and do lots of work towards it.  See my posts for {More} and More Planner Stuff.    However by June if not April or May, my focus has waned and the last 3 months of the year I'm hard put to remember what my word is/was.

I was having a Facebook Messenger 'chat' with my friend Mary about it saying 'I have wondered about having a different word for each quarter'.    She suggested 'Maybe you could have an overarching word - self care or balance - for the year. Then have a focus word for each quarter that could line up with some of the areas you want to focus on'.

Mary told me that she had signed up for Ali Edward's One Little Word workshop because it provides structure.  I haven't done OLW since 2017 but thought I would check it out.  It has changed since I last took part.  Ali has brought in a team to help her and the participants.  So I thought I would give it a go.

This video is a helpful introduction if you've never chosen a focus word for the year.

As I write this in 2022 I'm still no nearer choosing a word although one or two are bubbling closer to the surface.  And it's 2023 tomorrow!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Journal 2021

For 2021 I have chosen to follow along with Valerie Sjodin's Plan with me in 2021.  There are free tutorials on Valerie's blog, but I have signed up for the Premium version.

I am taking inspiration from Valerie's tutorials and as far as possible making her ideas my own.  If you are a regular reader you might remember that I said in this post that I wanted this year's journal to be less rigid.  That's all well and good but when I really thought about it,  I really like working in squares.  Lots of my textiles are squares.  My last two sketchbooks are squares.  So guess what!  Instead of circles that Valerie is using, I'm using squares.  And as much as I love the new layout Mary Brack has been trying out, I decided to stick with the squares and the rigid.

I am using squares as a symbol throughout my journal.

One of the things I want to learn this year is how to take decent pictures of my journal and sketchbooks!

My Word of the Year is Intentional.  On this definition page I also included synonyms, antonyms and a quote.

I have no idea why I included a future log.  More in hope than anticipation I think!

I've written the workshops in pencil because there's still the likelihood they may be cancelled.  Especially the January ones as we recently went into tier 4 lockdown.

Intentional isn't a word that you see in the Bible but fortunately I found a list online of suitable verses.

Quotes were easier to find, although not many of them actually include the word Intentional.

One of Valerie's design ideas is to use the Dutch door as a divider.  I am using the winter symbols of raindrops and snowflakes.  Valerie suggested doing doodles, but I don't doodle, so  I used a stamp that has this lovely garland of snowflakes.

This page is reserved for a private thoughts based on a three day study on Lectio365 - a daily devotional app.  Valerie provides a montly devotional in the premium version of Plan With Me.

For most of 2020 I wrote what I actually did in the month at the end of a month rather than use it as a guide to what I was going to do.  Who knows how this will get used!

I wrote the areas I want to intentionally focus on this year.  I wrote them inside squares of course!   And finally the start of the journal for recording to do lists, gratitude lists and what I did each day.

Valerie, Mary & I have archived the Living Your Word of the Year group on Facebook as we feel led to doing other things.  However you can still follow along with us as we continue in our own ways to live out our word of the year.

Valerie: https://www.valeriesjodin.com/

Mary: https://www.foundonbrighton.com/

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

PS:  While you are here check out Simply Create

 

Choosing a word for the year

I don't usually write about my next year's word this early in the year or do I mean late!  I quite like to reserve the big reveal for the new year.  Although when checking out the links below I found I'm not always consistent.

I have been choosing one word for the year for a while now.  You can see my words here:

Restore 2011        Focus 2012

Present 2013        Participate 2014

Thirst 2015     Purpose 2016

Connect 2017   Gratitude/Thankfulness 2018

Commit/Commitment 2019

So, on to 2020.

Looking back at the words I have chosen or have chosen me I can see some sort of link - apart from Thirst - which was a bit of a disaster anyway!  But probably at the beginning of every year the goals I set are very similar and at the end of each year I find I haven't really achieved them.

In light of the above quote - which is reminiscent of the one: If you keep doing what you've always been doing, you'll keep getting what you've always been getting, what road do I need to take in 2020.

What goals should I set for the year?

What do I want to see more of in my life and how can I work towards that?

My friend Valerie has made a great video about how she chooses her word for the year.

I'm not really quite so purposeful as Valerie.  Nor do I include God and prayers in my decision making as she does.

I tend to think about choosing a word a lot.  Last year I had a short shortlist of possible words but this year I have really only had one.  And to be honest I couldn't see how it would work with Bible verses as the word doesn't exist in the Bible (I know - I've looked!).  I looked at synonyms and that didn't throw up any help either.

And just as I was going to give up on this word, I suddenly thought of the passage in Ephesians 6 about the armour of God.

The next day on my Facebook Newsfeed I saw a link to a project in Australia which talked about this word.

Can you guess what has chosen me?

It's (drumroll please): resilience

I wondered though about my previous words and decided that really I need to have an action which might provoke me to do something positive.  So my word(s) for 2020 is

be resilient

There's a couple of weeks left of this year to sort out how I'm going to record this - if at all.  I'll let you know what I decide at the beginning of January.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

A calendar page in my journal

Whilst I was waiting to be sure of my word for this year I started making the calendar page.  I copied Valerie's idea from her blog post.

I bought Valerie's stencil and as soon as it came had a go with the washi tape - I have a lot of washi tape!

I printed out the calendar for January and auditioned it on the page.   I decided I didn't like the page on the left so painted it.

I used a lime Paper Artsy paint which looked much better.

I tried inking the page with Distress Oxide but didn't make a very good job of it.  I haven't used Distress Inks in a while!  Then I glued it down and made a mess of that also.  However it will do.

I used Valerie's stencil again for the month header and found a suitable quote online. I've written in all the things I know I'm doing already in January.

After a few days I decided to remove the ugly on the right hand page and redo it.  Although to be honest, it isn't much of an improvement!  

Ah well!  It will just have to do.

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

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

New Year New Word

Happy New Year

I have struggled to find a word for 2019 and as I am co-facilitating a group called Living Your Word of the Year 2019 I was getting a bit worried.

Right up until last Friday, it was a choice between JOY and WALK.

I couldn't get any peace about either word.  I even resorted to the 'opening the Bible randomly and pointing trick'!  First time I landed on Great Joy and the second time on a verse about pathways so I gave up on that.

On Friday morning I read Valerie's blog post where she included some questions, one of which was 'What do you want more of in your life?'  This isn't a new question to me but it spoke to me that day.

Roger & I went for a longish walk along the canal from Kingswood Junction to Lowsonford and back - stopping for lunch midway.  While we were walking I asked myself Valerie's question again.  Before we set out I had also read Ali Edward's post about her word for the year, HABIT.

As I walked along I pondered what habits I wanted to acquire not just in 2019 but as a lifestyle.  Several came up:

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

At this point you might be thinking, as I was, how does this help?  Now there's another 6 words to choose from!!!!!  So I asked myself is there one word that would cover all of this?  And it came to me:

COMMIT/COMMITMENT

So there we have it.  A word to live by for this year and beyond.

And some verses to go with it!

Psalm 37:3-7
Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;

And the opening page of my 2019 journal

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

Hashtag on Social Media:  #livingyourword2019

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


To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

Getting ready for Living Your Word 2019

I decided that this year I would make my own journal and would mostly record my Word of the Year in it with a calendar for each month.

I gathered together lots of scrapbooking papers and cut them to size.  I used Mary Brack's Signature Journal class as a starting point. 

I put them together in groups of 4 folded full size pages and some extra pages.

I sewed each set together as signatures.  I was going to leave them like that work through the signatures as I needed them.  But I know me and I am easily put off - I gave up on this years word and journal - so thought it might be better to make the complete journal.  I thread some sticky sided fabric tape through 2 of the stitches and put two pieces over the top to hold the 5 signatures together.

I cut 2 pieces of card which happened to be red on one side.

I used double-sided tape and gluestick to attach the card to the page of the first and last signature.

It didn't really stick very well so I put the tape again to hold it all together.

Here you can see a bit of the inside of the journal.

Once I know what my word of the year is, I will make an appropriate cover for the journal.

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.  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

Hashtag on Social Media:  #livingyourword2019

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

Everyday Journals ~ Living Your Word of the Year

If you read my post about searching for a way to organise my life in a journal you won't be too surprised to hear that I have found a way forward with the help of two of my dear friends ~ Mary & Valerie.   We have joined together to help each other and anyone else who would like to join us in a group on Facebook: Everyday Journals ~ Living Your Word of the Year.

Do you choose a word for the year? Or does it choose you? When we ask God for a word for the year he gives us something that he wants us to work on, to include more of during the year? Do you know what your word for 2018 is yet?

Have you tried planners, bullet journals and diaries and found they don’t suit your lifestyle? Do you want a simple, completely personalized, no pressure way of journal keeping? Do you have lots of scraps of papers with your ideas written down but often lost in the detritus on your desk? Or do you file all your thoughts in your head and become overwhelmed with all the ideas and no place to flesh them out?

Would you like a more creative way to organise your word, your ideas, thoughts, prayers, events, or your projects all in one place? Let us introduce you to an Everyday Calendar Journal.

Through 2018, Valerie Sjodin, Mary Brack and I will be sharing insights through blog posts for keeping an Everyday Calendar Journal. We will be using the journal to record events, experiences and relationships; to explore our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. It is our hope that you will make your journal your own, personalising it to make it a beautifully useful and valuable tool.

Watch for these hashtags on social media #livingyourword2018  #everydayjournals2018

Join us in our private Facebook group to find encouragement and support as we journal through 2018.

I look forward to seeing you there.
Bernice