Hobby Refound

I'm getting back into scrapbooking again after some months of being away from it. The past year or two has simply been a drudgery for me. It wasn't fun, only work. And with each month that I didn't scrap or did only a little I was that much "further behind". What kind of hobby is that, really? I mean, who wants to do something with that kind of setup? Do people with other hobbies ever "get behind"? C'mon on now! That just seems wrong to me.

So I picked up a new book at the recommendation of a friend: Photo Freedom. It is a scrapbooking organizing guide. And it is just what I needed. Instead of looking at photos just chronologically, you shift toward looking at them also thematically - which requires a different way of organizing. I've only just started, but already I'm feeling the weight lift. I'm beginning to realize that part of the drudgery was the fact that I kept doing the same thing over and over again: birthday page, Halloween page, Christmas page, Fourth of July, etc. For year after year of my kids lives I'd do the same thing (and three versions for each year no less!). Sure, it required some creativity to keep those pages fresh and different (no, I did not repeat the same page for each album), but let me tell you, it was still getting very, very dull.

Then I'd see all these creative pages either at scrapbook gatherings or in magazines or books. There were the ones where they show a kid doing the same thing at different ages, or collages of people or places. And I'd think to myself: that would be great to do if I could just come up with those kind of groups of pictures. Now I can! And I'm getting excited again.

So if you visit me any time soon - that mess on the dining room table is the raw material for this new creativity. I'm back in the scrapbooking saddle.

There's just one thing: I haven't actually scrapped a new page yet. But soon, very soon I'm going to and it will be just fabulous!