Creativity hub

Am I creative? I do not know, but I guess so!.. I just have a way of desiring to do things with my hands. In africa this more or less means doing things like making straw hats and sisal mats and baskets,cooking a myriad of local dishes. Truth be told, I enjoy working with my hands and putting things together. I enjoy trying out new things and I look forward to sharing some of the things I have come up with whether God-inspired or simple diy projects that I have worked on. I have posted a photo of six hand sewn pillows that I made about a month ago.I made these over two days when I took sick leave from work. I know someone is going to complain when she sees these because she already made an order and I think I am ‘Stalling’ She knows what this means.

Decorative pillows I made for my bed

I love it!

Sunshine after the rain…..

With a lot of exhaustion that had built up over the past months since late 2010 until a week ago, I was feeling terribly exhausted. Inside out!! Every time I had thought of taking leave there was something that came up that needed attention. Fatigue was becoming the norm. So I put my foot down and decided to walk away from all the stress to retreat to my “condominium” not that its anything close to that. But it was my haven at the moment. So yes, I took leave from work.

For my first day of leave, I sampled sleep for the whole day but every time I woke up I realized the more I slept the more I needed sleep. he he so there was no way I would keep up with this and since I was not bent on spending money of which I did not have an abundance, I decided I would not go window shopping or site seeing!!!! at restaurants or even near them. I resigned to cooking meals myself and Ohhhh not to be forgotten were the endless rounds of fresh peas in peanut butter and “posho”(maize floor bread)or steamed rice tipped with avocado. Yummy. Well, yes, I enjoyed my meals.

Anyway, I enjoyed every one of those days. But like I had mentioned in my previous post about progressive planning, I desired to use these 7 days of leave for this but believe me, time flies. Never the less I started on the process and I am glad I did. Despite the fact that what I needed to do over the next 12months was right Before me on paper, I realized I needed extra grace to follow through with all that I had written. It was not enough to have things to do on paper but I needed to have a year’s plan broken down to monthly tasks which were broken down to weekly and daily tasks. By God’s grace, I did that too. I listed all this in my little pocket notebook which I vowed to carry around. My new twin.

I can say by all means, my leave was successful. I did all I had to do and accomplish. Now!!!!! Implementation time beginning Monday 19th 2011. Wow, not as easy as it seemed but I believe I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me. And that is going to be one of my mantras I am excited inside but not yet on the outside I believe I will be motivated further as I achieve the daily goals which include quiet time in the morning, reading and meditating on a scripture every day, bible study for the start is going to be on what I learnt at church on Sunday and the Thursday weekday service, tracking all my day’s expenses, journaling and others. So far, so good. It feels like the sunshine after the rain.

And for this, Thank you Jesus….

Something new

Three weeks back I felt my entire life was in turmoil. I was in a place in life where it felt like every cell within me was screaming Lord, where do I belong? where are you? Where am I heading? I took my lunch break off to stare through the window from the 9th floor of my office building. It’s then that I got some quiet and the all I could hear was just one voice asking the question…”Lord, is there something new for me to learn today?” I continued to stare outside.A few minutes later something begun to form in my mind.My eyes begun to search the space I was staring into like words were right there before me forming up and I was trying to read the words. Finaly, they actually do form and all I could read was “Progressive Planning.” I wondered what that was…. Progressive Planning??

The words soon after faded away. I realised it was time to put my brain to work again.Then I remembered this is that time of the year when I begin to make plans for the next 12 months. It was time to review the
past twelve months too. I was in shock! because I had practically not done so much in the past twelve months.Thats not to say they have not been great. No. In contrast, they have been great. But alot of the great stuff has beenway out of my plans. Thats when it dawned on me that all these years I have been doing lateral planning and not progressive planning.

Lateral in the sense that. I split up the different areas of my life take for example spiritual, Financial,Family, Personal and Health and then write down plans for each. The problem with this kind of
planning is that I don’t know where to start and even if I do, I find myself focussing on one area and leaving the rest out. The problem intensifies if the first thing to be handled looks big, it is
really easy to give up before I even start. So here I am wondering how to make the best sense of Progressive planning.

With progressive planning, all I have to do is list out the areas like I do in Lateral planning, then break down the goals or tasks for each area beginning with the simple ones. For example,if I took the spiritual area, I would love to pray daily for at least 10mins everyday first thing in the morning. Then I think to myself. what next? if I succeed with that for a straight three weeks or entire month. The next thing would be to do my devotionals and bible study for at least 15minutes. mmmhhhmmm. And in case that works well, what next? then I could consider fasting the agenda for at least two days in a month probably the first two days!! So incase I do all that for a straight 2 or three months, I will be a
“Praying,Bible studying, fasting Christian ” Sounds nice doesn’t it? If I did the same in the Financial area, I would probably have paying my consistently tithes,debt clearing and piggy bank saving of my coins below a certain denomination.That way at the end of the 2-3 months, I will be a Tithing, Debt clearing, piggy bank saving christian.

It sounds all the better after I combine the two areas. It will be something like….
“A praying,bible studying,fasting,tithing,debt clearing, saving Christian”
Believe me, this idea blew my mind away. I was thrilled and went right ahead to begin setting goals and
making plans for the next 12 months. Ofcourse not withstanding the fact that we make plans but God
surely directs them. So this means if I have plans, I can get direction.If I do not have then…ooopsss
nothing to direct.

Well, all this to say, I believe I am going to have an interesting 12 months ahead…God willing.
I cannot wait to start this fantastic journey:)

A new day…

Rising early wondering what was  really in store for me today.  The past three weeks have seen me drag my feet out of bed minutes after 7:00am. The night was only four hours long but here I was bouncing with energy and zeal to face the day. I had no clue that what I was trying to figure out was actually right before me the whole time. At 5:21pm after work is when it dawned on me that the reason for the burst and zeal was simply because it is a new day, filled with new mercies and new blessings. This blog is one of them. Yay! I Can’t wait to be emptied and refilled right here with the Chosen Berries.

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