Tell Your Story

November starts the real preparations for December Daily. I’m not going to tell you about that project yet again, but there are some good takeaways from projects like that. Since it is also National Novel Writing Month, I want to use the novel-writing theme to talk about documenting family stories, but instead of doing paper crafting, I want to focus on writing stories and using digital aids to create books you and your loved ones will treasure for many years to come. 

I will mention several of these in the podcast tomorrow, but I wanted to share a little bit more about them here. I think I’ve mentioned Becky Higgin’s My Modern Story multiple times in the last year of podcasts. This is a wonderfully helpful method for documenting family histories and personal stories of all kinds. She created this project as a heartfelt attempt to help others, especially non-scrapbookers, find ways to quickly and efficiently preserve those important memories before they are gone. The workshop is free and can be completed quickly in one evening or an afternoon. It utilizes her Project Life app and allows you to add stories or text of any kind, really, along with photos. It’s so simple and she has great ideas for where to find those stories, like taking posts directly from social media, etc. I’ve used this app multiple times to document family stories, and I plan to eventually convert the stories I’ve created there into a family history book – the pages can be used to create stunning, hard-bound books either by downloading the pages directly or by ordering through the app. There are, of course, some in-app purchases, which are optional, and you can make your storytelling as simple or as complex as you like.

Along those lines, for those of you who like the look of traditional scrapbook pages, but don’t have the patience, money, or time, there are lots of options for creating fun, colorful, and artistic pages digitally. Many of the major scrapbooking design companies now offer digital versions of their products, which you can use with Photoshop and other applications to create beautiful scrapbooks right on your phone or computer. In fact, the aforementioned Project Life app can recreate the look of traditional or pocket-based scrapbook pages by using digital papers and other elements right in the app (in-app purchases available). Once you’ve created your pages, you can download them to print at home, order prints from the app, or convert them into a bound book as described above.

And speaking of bound books, don’t forget that online photo retailers like Shutterfly, Snapfish, Persnickety Prints, and Amazon Photos also create lovely bound books to preserve your family memories. You simply create your pages at home on your phone or computer, upload them to the print retailer of your choice, arrange the pages as you like, and order…simple as that. Most of them also offer an in-app method for designing your pages, where all you do is drag and drop your photos and text. This is a fantastic way to document those family stories, with or without photos and/or text. What’s even better is that you can order multiple copies of a book to give to other family members. Remember Christmas? It’s less than two months away….

One last word about documenting stories…and yes, it does involve December Daily. December Daily Prep Day is coming up on Saturday, November 12. This is a day that many participants look forward to as we spend our day online with the DD community getting our supplies ready and pre-making pages so we are ready to document when December 1 rolls around. There are often tips for organizing, beautiful page ideas, lessons of all kinds, and, of course, a lot of camaraderie as we all start to get excited about not just December Daily, but the holiday season as a whole. You can find out more about DD Prep Day in the links below.

Whether you scrapbook or not, celebrate Christmas or other holidays, or just spend the fall and winter months hibernating in your hidey-hole, this is a great time to start thinking about the stories and the legacy you want to leave behind. Do you have cool stories about your ancestors? Do you have more recent memories that you don’t want to forget? Or do you have a trauma that needs to be brought forward into the light of day so you can heal and move on? Documenting your stories is a great way to do it, and the options for how you get started are truly endless. If you need more help, or encouragement, or have questions, please feel free to email me or comment below…I’d love to help you get started telling your stories.

• Ali Edwards - December Daily
• Just Write - also at AliEdwards.com
• My Modern Story by Becky Higgins

Cups

When you were a child, did you fill your glass to the brim so that it was too full and you couldn’t move it without spilling? Did it seem terribly important to get those extra few sips into the cup, as if you might not have another glass of milk for a long time? Do you still do that today?  I do.

 

I can close my eyes and reflect on how many times I’ve tiptoed from the kitchen to my desk with a full cup of coffee sloshing against the brim, feeling the dribbles of sweet, creamy deliciousness trickling over my fingers, which I then lick off when I get back to my seat.  Once I’m settled in, I take a big sip and savor the rich, warm mouthful, and I feel like it’s worth the extra effort I took just to get it here. 

Sometimes I walk just a little too fast, or I turn the corner into my studio too jerkily, and a splash of that sumptuous goodness will slosh over the side, splatting on the floor, or even my clothes and shoes. I’m in such a hurry to get back to my routine, that I forget how precious each little drop is, and instead waste it on a floor that has to be mopped or clothes that now have to be changed and washed. I’m always disappointed when that happens, and it takes me away from both my planned work and the fulfillment of that first heavenly sip because not only have you lost one precious sip, but, by the time the mess is cleaned, the coffee is no longer at the ideal temperature to evaporate on your tongue. That moment of sweet and savory satisfaction is gone.

 

I’ve tried different things to combat the problem, but it always ends up the same. I’ve used a bigger cup, in the mistaken belief that I will be satisfied with the same amount of coffee, but no, the cup just gets fuller and fuller, as if that extra inch or two of space below the rim is just begging to be filled, either with more coffee, or more likely, with more creamer. Pretty soon, I have the same problem, but with a bigger cup. It’s as if the liquid delight magically expands to fill the space it’s in.

 

I think we sometimes have that same mentality in other areas of our lives. Our cups are full to overflowing, filled with activities, wants, needs, and whatever we can use to fill the space; we can’t enjoy our pursuits without a little bit spilling out the sides and being wasted now and then. My daughter and I were discussing this very thing a few days ago.  She had read an article about people who are perpetually late, which, of course, we both are.  The report postulated that being late wasn’t a symptom of someone with poor time management skills, but rather, a personality trait of someone who can’t be bothered to wait. Late people can’t stand to do nothing or to kill time. Rather than waste that little bit of extra time waiting for the meeting to start or the doctor’s office to open, we fill the available space with as much activity as we can, and sometimes (well, okay, most of the time), it backfires on us by overflowing into other activities, disrupting our plans and throwing everything off.

 

I’m completely guilty of this. I schedule so many must do’s into each day that there is no possible way to get them all done.  I arrive at every appointment at least 5 minutes late, and I can never seem to get where I’m going without running back into the house to pick up this, that, or the other that I left behind.  I do it with my budget, seeing an extra $5 on my spreadsheet and thinking to myself, “Oh, now I can get that…” whatever-it-is that I think I need that winds up overdrawing my bank account because I forgot about that auto-charge that hadn’t gone through yet. I even do it with food; I’ll order too much, or fill my plate too full, just in case what I want doesn’t fill me up.  I’m so blinded by the potential of what I could put in my cup that I forget to stop and ask myself if I should.  And honestly, most of the time, I shouldn’t.

 

Selecting “simplify” as my One Little Word this year has been both a blessing and a curse.  It’s definitely an area I need to work on, and it has proven to be quite the challenge. The only way I can truly simplify is to stop putting so much in the cup.  To let there be empty spaces in my activities, in my time, in my heart. Only then can I begin to embrace the idea that less is more, that I don’t have to fill all the available space, and that what I have is truly enough.

The essay above was one I wrote several years ago while taking a writing workshop with Ali Edwards. If you have a comment or would like to share your perspective, please share in the comments below, or start a post in our MMC Chat group.