Strictly Amateur

So, I've been trying to convince myself to scrapbook for a few years now. Mainly, I want to record the stories behind all the photos I have-- I've inherited many old photos for which I don't have the history, and it's sadly frustrating to me. Additionally, I have an exceedingly curious toddler who has inherited his Mommy's love for photographs. He loves to tote around albums with his photos in them, and his latest thing is to ask me, "What am I saying? What was I doing? Who is that?" for every single photo. It's adorable, but also making me a little crazy-- how many times will I have to tell him, "You were a newborn, and you were asleep, and you had a binkie in your mouth... so, you weren't saying ANYTHING!!" ? ;) Kiddo just seems like the child who NEEDS to have his life scrapbooked.

But, here's the thing, since childhood, I've been what I call a RAVING PERFECTIONIST. This means that nothing I ever create satisfies me. I always want things to be perfect. I compare myself and my work to others' and I always come up lacking. It's a horrible character flaw. Scrapbooking has fallen under that category of "things I'll likely never be good enough at, so why even try?" along with many other potential interests. But for the last year, my combo of meds and learning to challenge my negative thoughts has been making a big difference in how I view life. Not much has improved in my circumstances, but my feelings and attitudes are gradually becoming healthier and healthier all the time. For instance, at my last therapy session I said, "I know x is stressful, but there's nothing I can do about it. So I've decided not to worry about it. Is that wrong? It feels wrong!" Anxiety, perfectionism, and depression have been my constant companions for well over 20 years, so when they go "on vacation" (or, let's hope, move out-of-state :) ), it feels weird... but, good.

As a sort of challenge for myself, I decided this past week to attempt just one scrapbook page. I picked the photos and the colors, and did some debating-- and bugging my husband for his opinion. And, voila! I completed a page. It's not exactly submission-worthy or anything, but actually not as bad as I thought! I even completed a second page the next day. As the 2nd has Kiddo's "real name" on it, I won't post a photo of that one. Plus, I'm not as crazy about it. But, guess what? I'm keeping it anyway. I'm satisfied that I tried something that was hard for me to do, and it turned out okay. Does that mean I've officially "gone to the dark side" as I heard someone put it, and become a scrapbooking junkie? Well, we'll have to wait and see. But I'm off to some sort of start, anyway!