Get it done and move on...

I found myself with lots and lots of time to myself over the last days but somehow, never really got into sitting down and getting the paper and glue out. I wanted to, but it didn't happen which somehow showed that I was not really motivated. But I did plenty of other stuff such as finally organising my category drawers for my Library of Memories (Stacy Julian) system. The drawers are actually lovely boxes and they look really pretty up there on the shelf and they are still pretty empty right now as I have still to trawl through my printed out photos to pull and store photos for the different parts of my system. But that will come. I really work in baby steps!

What I actually spent most of my time with over the last days is sorting my old printed photos. Some time ago, I collected them all (thousands and thousands of them) into chronological year-by-year boxed storage with the intention of scanning and photo albuming them. Yes, of course, I only managed the first step and some "random" scanning! And there the boxes have been sitting for the last X years. Well, this week, I picked a year - it didn't matter to me which year - and got going.

Now this might sound odd to you, but I just started with 1988. I think this was because I had done a layout recently (here) on my Orient Express day out which had entailed a few scans and that was in 1988. So there I started. I figured that I can work forward from that and back. It was a good, manageable year to start with - nothing too major but still, quite a few life events. This was the year I turned 21 and the year I opened my little dress designing business (just one of the lives I have lived!). I scanned, and sorted and scanned and sorted some more. Then I went through the photos that I had in my hand and THREW some away - yes, in the bin!

Have you ever looked back over photos from the past and noticed just how BAD they all were! I never had a really good camera and just snapped here and there - a lot. I have always loved taking photos but I think that at least a quarter of them are out of focus, the other quarter chop peoples heads off etc and the rest, well, they are OK I guess, but not up to today's standards! (At least I hope so.) Yet at the time, they were wonderful photos! And with the years, you get a better feeling of those photos that mean something vs those which have people or places in them that you can't even name any more - they were important at the time but just haven't stood the test of time.

Then I started getting them into albums. Just the photos I think tell the story that is still important to remember. All the other photos are going back into those chronological boxes as cold storage. The one thing I made sure I did this time around (sorting my photos seems to have been a life work...) was not to be precious about the albums. I simply took a pen and wrote anything I wanted to note such as the date or the place or perhaps the occasion right onto the page. Made a mistake? Just crossed it out and wrote it again! I have reached the point where it is more important to me to get these into a viewable situation than to have them perfectly presented. And I really don't think that these are photos I want to be scrapping. But if I do, then I can see them in the album and have a scanned back up to print out and use. A perfect system I think.

I think that I sometimes get so caught up with the idea of the process (ask Jac - I am such a control freak, process driven person), of getting it perfect, of doing it "RIGHT" that I cannot move on. And this week has been a week to just jump in and work with it. I am sure that I will come across memorabilia or odd photos that should go in with album sections I have already done, but I am not worried, I will just put them in another album. And MOVE ON!!! Lesson learnt!

What have you learnt this week?

PS. I did manage to get these two layouts done. They certainly won't win any prizes for style and design but the Easter one used up some old product that I had lying around, and the photo is super fun and the second is my 12 on 12. And do you know what the date is today? It's only the 13th! I got my layout done right away. Another "get it done and move on" - tick.