 Hey guys, how are you? This year in our play through chronic pain. We're gonna be trying something new We're gonna be sharing with you all and hoping that it encourages you to share with others in the group and to share ideas whether you're in chronic physical or emotional pain what works for you and what doesn't and To give other people ideas of what maybe they could try now. This is no substitute for professional medical help State that right off the bat. I am not a professional in that regard and If you need professional medical assistance, there's no shame in getting it. Please do please consult with somebody I encourage you to do that Number one, right? This is what I do now. This is the cover for this is new I just did this yesterday The journal inside of it is not new so a couple of things that we're gonna do this year is chronicling and documenting our daily Pain levels and our daily our daily position if you will Our daily journey Cindy is doing it a little differently than is as am I and I think pig is Doing it more similarly with as Cindy, but everybody's doing it a little differently, which is fine I wanted to give you guys actively a different way to do things Wanted a couple of the things I do for tracking my physical health Is I do have a Fitbit so I use the Fitbit app. I currently don't have a lot of steps today. So let's see 529 that is really bad. Can you see that? That's really sucky I need to get more steps today. So I do track my steps that way I have been for a long time tracking my food with an app called lose it. Oh And that's yesterday and I never closed yesterday So I need to do that. So I track my food with the app called lose it and You can set your goals for calories or weight Well for weight what weight you want to be how much you want to lose and then it'll adjust your calorie intake that you're allowed and then you Put your foods in that you eat at every meal, which let's see. I need to catch up yesterday I don't know. Hopefully I didn't go over that wasn't yesterday. That was today yesterday I did go over we had a Lithuanian cheese pancake thing that is called that that name right there. Can you see that? It was very good actually my daughter made it. Her boyfriend is from Lithuania But it but you know what one of the things is don't kill yourself over not having a great day Some days are good and some days are gonna just be bad. I have Overall, let's see So Overall, I have more green days than red although it is Christmas time. So You know I'm having more red days than normal, but I'm not going to kill myself about it and my calorie intake is pretty low I don't add my walking into here, which would give me more calories every day I don't do that on purpose so that I'm hopefully burning More calories than I'm taking in but anyway, I use electronic devices rather than physically writing it down I used to be a member of Weight Watchers and while that doesn't work I got really tired of writing things down the electronic app is much better for me I'm not a big fan of electronic calendars, but the app for the calories does seem to work. So The other thing I have that I do is this so I do do daily pages and Daily pages is a way of writing what's on your mind and releasing stress and letting go of thoughts and feelings and I do find it very helpful. There's a lot of Videos and things here on YouTube and I've talked about it before and there's some books out there about doing it too And I'll try to find my old video on it and try to link it below Or some kind of reference for you all but I just use this small plane Let's see Notebook lined just cheap line paper. This happens to be from Daiso the doll the Japanese dollar store Costs $1.50. It's got just enough pages in here for me to do it for a month. And I just write I just write With no care or concern to spelling or punctuation. It's like one giant run-on sentence for three pages and Then I'm done and I usually do it at night and that helps me release You know, whatever stress or tension or things that are going to bother me But the things that are bothering me so that in theory I can go to sleep a little easier But hello, I'm at a puzzle. So that doesn't always work And that's going to just fit in here so I can just open this and I can just write over here, I have my Again favorite writing pen, which is just a plain bit crystal I did have three highlighter pens and this envelope So every day or that I do this I'm going to be adding in One of these little graphics now This is a graphic that is available for you to print on in the micro in the art through chronic pain art play through chronic pain Facebook group and it's a little thermometer and I will be Adding it in and then I'm going to be taking a corresponding color of pen for which I made a color chart Depending on my mood or feelings or whatever's happened to me during the day Which one of these am I feeling am I calm and at peace am I having clarity about something that's going on? So am I am I in that transition period or am I just having a crap day? So depending on what kind of day I'm having I'm going to color my thermometer and maybe I'm having a crap day But it's not that crappy. So it's not going to be all the way at the top It's going to be maybe halfway or a third. So I'm going to be pasting that in first and Coloring it and then I'm going to be doing my daily pages writing and letting all of that stress go That's going to be how I handle that What are you going to be doing and what works for you? These are going to live in here I also have some extra of the stickers in here now. This was a Planner notebook from Michael's for which I took the binder rings out yesterday. You'll see the holes here I'm not going to bother covering them because they don't bother me that much and the envelopes of stickers and Thermometers and the pens and the notebook all fit in here nicely and it closes nicely and This usually sits in my daily drawing bag, which you can see the little corner of here downstairs But if I needed to I could take this I could put it in my handbag and I could take it with me somewhere If I needed to because it's not that big if I in a really big pinch I could just take the notebook out of here and put it when I'm traveling and put it in my travel art case or my backpack Which I have done so that's how I'm going to deal with my chronic pain this year and handling the stress from it mental and otherwise and Try to work through healthier solutions for dealing with things rather than unhealthy ones like eating Which seems to be my Medication of choice. So anyway, what do you do? I would love to hear join us for our journey over in The Facebook group. We would love to have you over there. Join the discussion If you have any questions comments or concerns, please leave them below Don't forget to like share and subscribe and above all go out and have a great day Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys