There’s a secret I’ve learned about Project Life that hopefully will help me keep current: it’s all about the story. Project Life, while initially about getting photos onto pages, has become, for me, a way to capture little bits of daily life. Sometimes that is a photo, but mostly it’s a story.
Some days are so long, I’ll have multiple stories to tell. Some days fly by so fast, it seems like the only story to tell is we ate, we drank, we slept. But there are moments in between that disappear if you don’t have some way of catching them. The way a child looks both like an adult and an infant in the same moment in time. The smile your spouse gives you when you’re sharing an idea wordlessly. The sounds that comfort you and make you think of home. Everything is a story, you just have to catch it as you notice it.
Since I’m concentrating on story catching, I will be putting little caches of journaling cards and pens throughout the house for myself and my family to use. Yes, I will be encouraging my family to add their own words to our story. Hopefully I can talk them into photographing our lives as well.
I will also make sure I carry journaling cards in my purse as well, so I can document the world around me when I’m out and about.
I’ll make sure my camera is handy, and the battery fully charged. If I take any phone photos, I’ll email them to myself immediately, so they don’t wander aimlessly in cyberspace forever. And I’ll print at home once a week, with the templates I shared with you last week.
Any memorabilia I collect will go into a small lunch box, and will be curated and added to pockets once a week as well.
Of course, this is the plan at the moment. I’ll re-evaluate and adapt as needed.
That will be the key to success I think: adapting on the fly. That, and not feeling like I have to create a two page spread for each and every week. Some weeks will be two pages, some one, and some three and a half.
I’m committing to story telling, not pocket filling.
