Hey all,

I have so much catching up to do with reading mails. I thought it would be best to start with a few newsletters, so I've just been reading one of Ali Edwards' old newsletters. I really like her newsletters (too bad it's on a short break right now....) because of the wonderful examples she gives us and because of the weekly challenges she gives us. One of the challenges was:

This week your challenge is to create something, anything, that celebrates your chosen word for 2007. Maybe a layout. Maybe a blog posting or a journal entry or a simple post-it note that you put somewhere you can see it each day. Make sure to journal about why you chose your word and what it means for you - the more you let yourself explore the more benefit you will receive in the end.

I've been thinking about it for quite some time. It's easy to pick a word to which I'm familiar to, but it's more challenging to pick something I'm not used to. Since there's so much going on in my life right now, I chose the word DIFFERENT. Let's have a closer look at that. Let's peel it off. What does it really mean for me? And what am I going to do with it?

One huge difference is the fact that I'm looking for a new job with a completely new focus and work process: Job coach. Since I haven't been educated in this area of expertise yet, this will be a huge difference for me. A job coach is so much different from a Traffic Engineer, that you can even hardly make a comparison of the two. So I won't do it here. Maybe I'll do it in the future once I've been working as a job coach for some time.

One of the other things that I want to be different in / do different is my scrapbooking. My usual style is the usage of:
* basic, solid background cardstock
* hardly any patterned papers
* hardly any embellishments
* a lot of interactive things
I guess you've all noticed these things in my layouts lately!
I do want to keep these things, but I want to challenge myself too. So, instead of changing my style completely all of a sudden, I decided to start with my Scrap-a-Ganza planner. I've picked an entire kit of patterned paper out of my supplies for the shop: Urban Couture from Basic Grey. And I'm already thinking about embellishments. I am sticking to the interactive things. It's way too funny to not do that.
So, this going to be different for me too. Not making an entire album with mostly solid cardstock and hardly any embellishments. As I said, it's not meant as a complete change in style, but I do like to do something different every once and a while. And who knows, maybe it is so much fun to do, I'll do it more often!
And maybe I'll take a few workshops at Scrap-a-Ganza that don't really fit my style. That would be a challenge, wouldn't it? It definitely would teach me something, whether I like the workshop in the end or not.

And last but not least I want my health to be different. Now that's a real challenge. Right now I don't seem have a lot of influence in it, but I'm still not feeling really healthy. I'm still way to tired. So that's why the doctor ordered a full blood check. Maybe we'll find something there. I do hope my health will be different (read: BETTER) by the end of this year. I am going to work on it, somehow.......

Well, that's it. There's nothing more for me to tell about the word DIFFERENT. What's YOUR word for 2007? Let me know what it is and why it's this word!

Talk to you later!