Paperclipping: The Video Podcast | Design Your Story

Just trying to catch up on posting my Project Life spreads!

I decided to only take this week to Friday and include Saturday in the next week, since that’s the day we left for CHA. I want to see the whole CHA trip in one spread.

I’ve been going for simple all along, but this week I had to make sure it was extra simple and fast. Coming back from CHA with over 50 videos to post here (still a few more left!) in addition to the usual stuff we do already, I didn’t have much time.

It’s amazing to have such an easy system for recording so much detail of our lives!

Thought I’d crop real close up so you can hopefully see the stories that go along with the photos.

Notice I’m not a stickler for putting something in for every day, nor even for marking the days of everything. For example, I’m really not concerned that we know which day it was that Aiden was holding Gatsby around the waist while they kissed (we don’t like Aiden to do that, but I can’t help snapping pics when he does!).

The date is recorded in the metadata of the photo and it’s all good.

Other things do warrant a label that tells the day to give an idea of what our schedule and life is like. Those are stickers that say,”Fri” next to the butterfly. Notice, I also don’t worry about putting things in chronological order. My Friday evening picture shows up before my Friday morning pictures.

I just go with whatever looks better and is faster and I don’t freak out about it.

With all these photos, I decided the fastest way to get the journaling in would be to just type it up, cut it out, and lay it on top of, or next to, the photos. In my rush my measurements got a bit off on these, but I’m cool with it.

Project Life is so forgiving when it comes to imperfection.

Notice: It’s beyond time to change the blade on my cutter. I think there’s a blade in the closet. Just haven’t taken the time to bother yet so my cuts are not clean lately.

Another one of those, “just going with it,” things.

Priorities.

Hello, Project Life!

I had a hard week.

I get overwhelmed when there is more to take care of than I can wrap my mind around. And all the while I know I’m happy and I love my life, but that doesn’t stop the tension from seizing my muscles, shooting pain down my arms, in my jaw, causing numbing sensations in my lips and mouth.

I’m prone to anxiety and sometimes that leads to a sadness approaching depression, but not quite.

So I didn’t feel interested in taking photos this week. I took a few. And I saved ephemera from much of what I was doing, sticking it in the pockets of my book as the days went.

Then it came time to put it together, and wow — that had a powerful effect on me today.

You know the old criticism that scrapbookers aren’t “real” and that we only share the good stuff?

Well guess what? What is real is how fortunate we are — most all of us living in 1st world countries right now are living an existence 100% unfathomable to most of the entire human race. Human existence for most has been one of malnutrition, hunger, violence, pain and sickness, poor shelters, and short lifespans.

So when I finished putting my week together in Project Life — I saw what was real.

I journaled about my struggles this week — though pain is relative, what pain we do feel is still real. But what my Project Life showed me that what is also so real about our lives is that we’re so unbelievably fortunate.

My difficult week included a trip to my massage therapist, a family trip to expensive coffee, new clothes, dance classes, a breakfast date with my sweetheart, and a short film that Izzy and my son helped make.

And those are just the most obvious things. There is so much brilliant color in my life.

I’m being authentic. I shared the reality of my stress this week. But today Project Life showed me the rest of what is truly real. And it made me feel so happy and grateful today.

This is something I could not have gotten had I only saved the usual stuff scrapbookers normally save in the hopes of eventually making a page of it. This is an immediate picture of how great my week really was.

Closeups…

I’ve become so enamored with having an immediated place to document the small stories that when I saw a note I had jotted down last December, I couldn’t bear to file it away in my box, which is stuffed full of hilarious stories, still un-scrapped. So I added my little December story to a card and added into a pocket for this week. It’s the black and white journal card.

If you’re on the fence about Project Life, just do it. Keep it simple, but do it! As long as you’re keeping it simple so it’s doable. I can’t imagine anyone ever regretting it.

Hello, Project Life!

So I ran into some funny little problems this week, which you can see in the photo above, and which I will talk about below.

(more…)