Surviving my life hurdles in May 2017

Hello May!  Such a lovely month to look forward to.  Hopefully with some great weather which I can enjoy fully before hay fever season kicks in at the start of June!

It’s great to be feeling so much more positive than I was even just a few short months ago.  I’m so appreciative that my MS symptoms are still showing the slight improvement I noticed in April and March and I really hope that this continues for as long as possible.

A few changes…

As I look back over the goals I set at the start of the year I’ve started to notice that they don’t fully reflect who I am and where I want to go with my life any more.  Yes, the majority of the goals I set in January are still important to me but due to everything I’ve learnt about myself over the last few months I have a better understanding of where I want to go in life.  

Therefore, I will be introducing a few new goals which I think will help me to survive my life hurdles even more effectively, including creative and fun goals because what else could be better for me than exploring my creativity and enjoying myself?

Did I achieve my April goals?

Yes, I did!  Although I still forgot my limits at times and sometimes I didn’t always remember to communicate my MS symptoms to family and friends so this is still a bit of a work in progress!

Learning to live a little

I thought it might be nice to share with you some pictures of my life so you can see what I’ve achieved this month and how I’m learning to live with MS.  I do what I can and rest in between.  Some days are harder than others and I could never manage a whole day of activities but I still appreciate everything that I can do in life!

I’ve become such a big fan of Instagram recently, where I’ve shared a lovely collection of creative photographs from my life.  Please follow me over there if you get the chance!

My main achievements:

Parenting and family

Spending time with my son and enjoying myself without overdoing it.  I even went to a messy play session with him which was absolutely amazing!  We went with my dad and he stepped in whenever anything required too much energy, making the session manageable for me.

Now my son is two and a half he is having so much fun playing in our garden, I’m able to join him for a play or supervise him from the garden bench if my energy levels are low.

Blogging

I think I’ve achieved a lot in blogging this month, especially considering I have to work around my illness!  The article I wrote about my Tysabri treatment for MS is proving very popular, which is great as I think there is a real lack of information out there for fellow MSers trying to decide on which treatment path to go down and I wanted to help as much as I could!  

I also managed to write my first guest post, although this made completing all my other blogging tasks more difficult I’ve certainly learnt a lot from the experience.  My article will be featuring in the ‘Confessions of a Spoonie’ series, which is a great project covering a broad range of different chronic illnesses, run by Jodie from It’s Yet Another Blogger.

My May goals

Let’s bring on some new goals!  I’m going to be ambitious  but I’m also not going to push myself too hard if I don’t feel up to it over the month as I don’t want to end up frustrated.

Health and wellbeing

• Slowly build up my exercise regime by introducing new activities (if possible), such as yoga and swimming.  Continue with my walking and getting outdoors every day for plenty of fresh air.

The walking that I was really enjoying has started to slip a bit and there is no excuse for this really as the weather is the best it’s been since I started.  I think I was trying to do too much then getting annoyed at myself so I need to just stick to short walks as that’s still better than nothing!

Parenting and family

• Find more fun and simple activities that I can enjoy with my son without completely wearing myself out.

I’ve really enjoyed being able to do a few more simple activities with him recently so I think it’s time to mix things up a bit and have fun by trying out a few new ideas.  I have a couple of boards on Pinterest where I save any activities and crafts which require very little time or energy to complete, they are perfect for me and you might find them useful too!

Creative and fun

• Make more time for being creative, doing what I love and expressing myself more.

With my background in art education I love being creative, even though it’s harder now, so I thought why not make being creative one of my goals?  I really enjoyed doing something a bit different and throwing a pot this month so I need to make more time for having fun and expressing myself!

Blogging

• Stop putting off anything technical or complicated.

I’ve been enjoying blogging so much but I’ve just focused on the parts of blogging I love up until now, such as writing helpful articles and creating interesting graphics but there are a few technical bits and pieces I’ve been seriously neglecting which I need to sort out.  I want to make my blog useful to as many people as possible, so although I’m pretty rubbish at that side of blogging I’m going to try to learn as much as I can!

On a more fun note, I’ve found one of the best parts of blogging is meeting and connecting with other bloggers so I’d definitely like to do more of this over the next month too.

So there are my goals for May, wish me luck!

Do you have any of your own goals you’re working towards?  Is there anything you’ve achieved this month which you didn’t think you could?