Birthday Project - Day 1

For several years I have been hearing about One Little Word by Ali Edwards and have been interested in participating but never took the leap until January of this year.  The end of last year I decided that Grateful would be my word this year.  I felt it was speaking to my heart.  I needed to focus on the things I am grateful for instead of getting lost in the negative.  Ali offers a class on One Little Word and I am taking it this year and really enjoying the prompts which are helping to keep me focused on my word.  That along with a keeping a gratitude journal have been instrumental in helping me see the positive.  The other thing I have heard people talk about in recent years is celebrating your birthday by doing Random Acts of Kindness (RAK).  Many people do the number of years they are going to be turning, in my case I will be 48 in August which means doing 48 Random Acts of Kindness.  Since that is way too many to do in one day I have decided to do a  RAK every day for the next 48 days ending on my birthday.  I am super excited about this and am trying to come up with ideas that will be fun for the recipient and budget friendly at the same time.  As others who have written about their experiences have said it seems self serving to write about it but at the same time it is nice to document it and see what works well and what doesn't.  I have decided to write about it here on the blog and not on Facebook for that reason.  I will take pictures when I can to help document the fun!  Really this is more like Intentional Acts of Gratitude but IAG doesn't have the same ring as RAK ....ha!

Today is Day 1 and while I was out for a walk I found a piece of paper on the ground that looked to be important and it had the address of the person it was for on the paper so I walked to that house to stick it under their windshield wipers and it turns out the person was in their car filling out paperwork so I tapped on the window and returned the paper.  Second RAK also happened while walking I saw a woman who was really pushing hard to walk, arms pumping the whole bit but when she saw my husband and I she slowed down to a much slower pace so I cheered her on and said to keep at it that we were all out here to get exercise.  The last thing which was what I had planned was I fed the meter for someone whose meter had expired and then ran up and fed someone's meter as they were approaching the meter.  This woman used a cane and came up and hugged me and told me I didn't need to do that as she had handicapped tags.  There is a lot of confusion in our town as to whether or not people with handicapped tags need to pay but she was still happy and I got a hug, I call that success!  Also, walking back to my car I saw the woman getting into the car I paid the earlier meter for and she was using a cane too.  It felt good to help people who may need extra time to get back to their meters.  I had planned on only 1 RAK/IAG but now I guess it will be 48 days and how ever many present themselves to me.