This is the time of year I always start taking stock of my scrapbooking. What's working? What isn't? What do I want to do? What makes me happy?
It's also the time of year when burnout with ongoing projects hits hard. This year especially - I've never felt so tired.
I’ve scrapbooked consistently for twelve years and I always try make it work for where I am in my life.
I’ve made a lot of pages and don’t have a huge backlog of projects on my to-do list (there are some). I also have older kids now (10 and 13), so documenting their everyday lives is just not a huge part of my scrapbooking anymore.
So what do I want to do next year to make sure I'm invigorated and energised by scrapbooking?
It’s easier to start with what I don't want. The 'nopes'.
Nope to having projects going that I must contribute to each week or month to keep them alive.
So nope to Project Life or any kind of year-long weekly project for 2021. I have made one almost every year since 2010 and I need a break. Project Life is a chore. A valuable, wonderful and worthwhile chore, but still. I'm taking a year off.
Nope to a pile of projects that I MUST work on and check off each time I sit down at my desk before I get to the thing I really feel like working on in that moment.
Nope to feeling behind.
Nope to boxing myself in.
And nope to self-imposed schedules and commitments.
I am a perfectionist, an ideas-person and no quitter. It's an awesome super power but also terribly exhausting.
So what's left? Where is my happy place?
Yes to a clean slate and endless possibility every time I sit down to scrapbook.
Yes to asking myself "what do I want to make today"?
Yes to telling big stories, small stories, sublime stories, ridiculous stories, happy stories, sad stories, old stories, new stories and hard stories (and having fun doing it).
Yes to being an artist, a crafter and a documenter rather than a project manager with a hard hat.
Yes to scribbling a poem on the bottom of a photo and that being enough.
Yes to going back to basics.
Yes to simplifying.
Yes to trying new things and messing up.
Yes to worrying less about what the final product/album/book will be.
Yes to being ok with making pages just for pleasure even if they don’t have an obvious home.
I think it’s also important to head in the direction of fun and energy whenever we can. I can see, writing this all down, that I'm just feeling some burn out.
One of my favourite motto's is "If you can't say hell yes, it's a no." Such great words to live by.
I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts. Blog comments haven’t been working right so feel free to comment on my Instagram post or message me there.
Thanks for reading!
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