One Little Word | FOCUS | February

Who knew?? It seems I may be able to focus!!

I chose the word FOCUS (or maybe it chose me) as my One Little Word for 2016. At first nothing happened. I still completely lacked focus. Just like always.

So I bought a MudLove band with the word “focus” on it. I wear it every day. Then I bought the word “focus” made out of recycled materials and put it on the wall beside my computer.

At the first of January I wrote about my word – what it means, why I chose it, quotations with the word, plan of action, intentions, . . . stuff like that. And I spent a good amount of time staring at my arm and the wall. Nothing.

All of a sudden it was February – time to assess my FOCUS in January. All of a sudden I had a revelation. For the entire month of January I had actually been focusing on something: Bible study! For a number of years that has been hit or miss for me, mostly miss.

There’s no excuse for me not being consistent with Bible study. I’m home a lot, and I deeply enjoy Bible study. BUT I start it, get distracted easily, and don’t finish. Or I get side-tracked and don’t even start it.

On the first of January I decided to SHOW UP (a mantra of the OLW group) for Bible study by doing it every day (not knowing whether I would actually stick to it). When I was home all day, I did it in the morning after I got ready. If I had to go out first thing, I’d do it as soon as I returned home. Somehow I managed to do Bible study every single day in January. 

Wow. Nothing interfered with my daily Bible study for a whole month, not even the cat who sat on my stuff at least once every session. (Hi, Wu Chow!)

One morning I knew I’d have some time between appointments, so I took my Bible stuff with me. I went to Starbucks and worked on my Bible study while I had coffee and a breakfast sandwich (that’s the remains on the napkin):

Ali Edwards sends out monthly prompts to those in her OLW workshop. For February we are to put our word into practice. So, I’m FOCUSing on a new area, while keeping up with my daily Bible study. For February my practice will be FOCUSing on my photos. Maybe I can FOCUS on two things?

About my photos, . . . Lord help me, I have a ridiculous number of photos. I have grandkids; I have pets. Need I say more?

This month I want to get on top of my photos. Every day I’m going to work on one of these three things:

1. Transferring photos from my iPhone to my computer. (I keep forgetting to do that. This is one reason I wish I had a Mac so they’d transfer automatically. And that’s the only reason.)

2. Deleting photos, both from my iPhone and my computer.

3. Organizing the photos as they’re added to the folders on my computer.

Here’s the page I made for FOCUS for OLW for February:

I’ve printed the page and taped it into my bullet journal. I don’t know how I’m going to mark off the days – by put a letter in each circle to indicate what I did that day (“T” for transferring, “O” for organizing, or “D” for deleting) or by giving myself gold stars.

In the meantime I’m keeping up with what I do each day on the February monthly page of my bullet journal.

See the column on the far side of the left page? That’s where I’m tracking my photo progress. (I got the idea of this minimal tracking method from Ryder Carroll, the originator of the bullet journal.)

Bonus photo from my morning Bible study:

Notice anything? I got a FOCUS mug! (I got it here.) Now I’ll really be able to focus!!

Thanks for stopping by! Thanks for your comments. I’m off to delete some photos! I am so focused!