Project Life: on getting behind and catching up (part 1)

I am sitting here in the corner raising my hand with the other Project Lifers that have fallen behind.  At the onset of this project I told myself I wouldn't get behind, I wouldn't stress about it, and I would effortlessly document my family's life for 2012.  Then reality set in.  Sure I love to scrapbook but honestly, I can't say when the last time was that I have actually sat down and created more than one page in well...a month.  So who was I kidding that I would be able to pull off a spread a week?  Well actually I did quite well up until week 5...WHAT?  and we are now entering week 43...yikes!

But all is not lost...

Even though I wasn't finishing a spread a week, I was still taking pictures, still collecting bits and pieces of our daily life, still recording the little moments, I just wasn't getting those pictures off the computer or those bits and pieces in the pockets.  I was thinking like a Project Lifer I just wasn't acting like one.  But then my son asked me where the rest of our weeks were.  And my daughter came home and handed me a movie stub from her first movie alone with friends and told me it was great for Project Life, if I was still doing it. 

and that got me thinking....

All 5 weeks of our lives that I have recorded and documented and finished were the most favorite part of any album that I have ever done.  All 5 weeks of my Project Life album are the only album pages that anyone in my family has ever taken upon themselves to look at, marvel at, comment on, laugh about, reminisce about.  This was something that I loved.  This was something that they loved.  This was scrapbooking in its simplest form.  This was documenting and recording our lives as we lived it.  This was capturing those moments that I would otherwise not create a layout about.  This was getting out into view those pictures that would otherwise take a back seat to my typical scrapbook and live forever in their chronological place in my photo boxes.

So what on earth was holding me back....

I could make so many excuses for what was holding me back...I didn't take enough photos that week, I didn't have time to edit my photos, my pictures looked boring, my kids wouldn't cooperate with the camera, my pages don't look like so and so, I don't have time to make my pages the way I want, I had too many options...  In reality?  The only thing holding me back was me..so what if I don't have enough photos for the week to fill 2 pages?  Who says I can't combine 2 (or 3) weeks?  Why do my photos have to be perfectly edited...life isn't perfectly edited...a quick tweaking session each week is just fine.  My pictures are boring to whose standard?  Who was I trying to please?  When I look back on it and how much I love what I did and my family loves what I did...obviously I am pleasing the right people...so, the answer is ME! I am the only one holding myself back from moving on and documenting our lives.  My need for perfection and my self doubt about my work are the only real reasons that up until 2 weeks ago my family only lived through February 5, 2012...at least according to Project Life.

so I jumped back on the bandwagon....

Although I guess I never was fully off the bandwagon.  My workspace was filled with receipts, ticket stubs, labels, post it notes, etc. etc. My PL album sat open waiting to be filled.  I still visited my favorite inspirational blogs, I still wrote "catch up on PL" on my to do list.  But a few weeks ago, I made the conscious decision to do just that.  Today I am finishing up week 14, I have photos in the pockets up through week 32 and I am getting ready to place an order for weeks 33 - 43 which will make me current in photos.  The weeks that I have already completed have gone by quickly because I stuck to the premise of project life...photos & words, easy and simple.  I have relied heavily on working the Clementine Core Kit and one Studio Calico Kit at a time; and while I have added a few personal touches here and there I haven't gotten caught up on fussing over every single detail and I have to say I LOVE the result.

If you are still with me...thank you!  I plan to share some full pages and my process on how I got caught up in the next few days.  My hope is that it will help someone else out there that is as far behind as I am/was to document your life and not give up.   The more I work on my pages, the more I love this system, the more I love my album and the more I am so happy that I wouldn't let myself quit.