Well, it’s official. We’re one quarter of the way done with 2012. Have you made a quarters worth of progress on your 2012 goals? Yeah, that’s what I thought – me either.
To be fair, I didn’t technically set new goals at the start of the year as I’m still working on my Scrap-i-versary and Birthday goals from last April & May. (Which by working on I mean, largely ignoring before realizing it is, uh, in fact now April and I need to get a move on.)
But I did write out a list of “wants” I wanted to focus on with my scrapbooking for this year, so now seems like a good time to reflect on how things have gone so far.
Here was my list:
I WANT…to trade the busy in favor of the meaningful.
Busy? Yes. Meaningful? I’m not sure.
To tell you the truth, I’m at a bit of an odd place in my scrapbooking right now – a place where I’m not totally sure I’m in touch with what exactly “meaningful” means to me anymore.
In a way I’d say it’s the fallout of too much focus on busy scrapbooking the last couple of years. Once the busy-ness is stripped away, I’m not sure I know what I want to fill it with now. But I’m excited to dig into this idea more this year and really focus on finding out what meaningful means to me.
I WANT…to push my creativity to the next level.
Design and creativity are two of my favorite aspects of scrapbooking so for me this one was easy. I’ve definitely been pushing myself more this year and I’d say I’m happier with my layouts now than I was at the end of last year. Am definitely excited to continuing playing and exploring this year.
I WANT…to stop allowing disorganization to limit my creativity and storytelling.
Of all the items on my wants list, this one is still the biggest issue, and unfortunately, the one I’ve made the least amount of progress on.
The 2nd Annual Great Computer Spring Clean-a-thon was a good start but what I really need is to make some MAJOR progress on my photo organization. I can’t be inspired by my photos if I don’t ever actually look at them in a creative and meaningful way.
Look for lots of action on this one in the next few months.
I WANT…to make time to scrap just for me.
In the last 3 months I did manage to make this happen. Once. For my 30 Days of Lists mini album.
But I know in order for this to happen more, I need to: a) commit to scrapbooking-only (non-designing/blogging) time and b) know what scrapbooking for me means, which again ties into the whole “what is meaningful to me” question from Want #1.
I WANT…to tell the stories that matter most to me.
See my answer for Want #1. Apparently it’s the answer of the day.
Well that’s my first quarter update on my 2012 scrapbooking resolutions. I wouldn’t say I’m off to a running start but I have started and that’s what matters.
I’d love to know – how are your 2012 scrapbooking goals and resolutions going? Made any good progress?
Amy says
Re: Organizing your photos…
I’m not sure if you use a Mac or not, but when I switched from PC to MAC – everything with my pictures changed and improved. iPhoto is a pretty powerful tool to organize and view photos. You can search by face, tags, events, dates, your favorites, on and on… I took one of the tutorial classes for it through the Apple store and really try to utilize the program to its full capacity. Besides countless other reasons to switch to a MAC, this really stood out (at least in the digi scrapping world!).
Within iPhoto, I created folder (or album) on the left side called “Scrap It”. I take my most favorites out of my events (which they permanently remain in as well) and put them in there – to remember to scrap them!
Works great. Good luck!
Amy says
Ahhh… just read you use Aperture. I’m assuming its probably more powerful than iPhoto and does the same. 🙂
Lynnette says
Yep, I use Aperture but I appreciate the suggestion! Unfortunately my photo issues are due to human laziness rather than software issues, haha. Now if I could just pay someone to organize for me, I’d be all set. LOL!
M. Bowen says
Melanie here! I absolutely loved this piece, please email me–I have a question about your blog 🙂 MelanieLBowen[at]gmail[dot]com
Lynnette says
Hi Melanie! Feel free to use my Contact page to contact me with any questions you might have. You can find it here: http://modern-school.flywheelsites.com/contact/