The scrapbooking world is all abuzz about next week’s Week in the Life project from Ali Edwards. This exercise is where you dedicate one solid week to photo-taking and journaling your daily life. To a busy scrapbooker however, finding the time for intense documentation can seem intimidating.
I want to use this post to offer some encouragement, that I believe you can tackle this challenge. Here’s how I know: I believe I can do it. I’m a busy wife, mom and business woman who struggles with juggling it all, just like you. My gut reaction to this project was: “There’s no way I could do this, I don’t have the time and its just not the right week for me.”
As I pushed away the nagging inner voice, I decided to challenge myself before I challenged you! With some encouragement from Kristin of Log Your Memory, my week began yesterday.
My first 24 hours taught me a few things:
- A Week in the Life is a great opportunity to try new things.
- It’s OK to use the little point & shoot or even the camera phone.
- If I stop looking at my BlackBerry, there’s lots to see.
- I have lots of interesting thoughts that I don’t normally write down.
- I can never find a piece of real paper; my world is digital.
The big, nearly immediate, lesson was that journaling by hand was not going to work for me. I dislike my handwriting, I can’t keep track of paper nor can I ever find a piece to write on. This led me to brainstorm a few ways for us digitally-minded girls to dive into the project
Three digital solutions for daily documentation
1. Evernote – While I’ve recommended Evernote in the past, I’d not yet found the right way to incorporate it into my habits. I know now that Evernote is my personal solution to journaling. Since my phone is always at arm’s reach (whereas paper and a pen are not), I can type and send a note off to Evernote as it comes to me.
2. Facebook – While I will send camera phone images to Evernote, Facebook will provide a way for my close friends and family to take the ride with me. Most importantly, having quick feedback and encouragement will give me motivation to keep going.
3. Twitter – It took me past the 24 hour mark to realize that I already do a lot of daily documentation through my frequent tweeting. In particular, I often send photos with witty commentary to TweetPhoto or TwitPic.
Making this work for me (and you) centers on accepting my digital world and celebrating that as part of daily story. With these “a ha” moments under my belt and 3 simple tools in my arsenal, I feel even more confident that I’ll be able to capture my week.
Check back on Sunday for my Week in the Life product picks, including the items I’m using! Are you participating in Week in the Life?
Wow… started already!?!? Good for you … and the encouragement pretty much worked both ways, even if inadvertent. I hadn’t committed until yesterday when you started asking about it… great tips! 🙂
I’m going to do this too. But we’re on a mini-vacation next week so I’ll do it the week after. I want it to be a typical week.
Love your tips. I’ll have to check out evernote.
One of the reasons I decided to just go ahead instead of waiting for the ‘right week’, was because we don’t have typical weeks. My husband and I both travel a lot plus our custody schedule of his younger son is a moving target.
I am hopeful this experience will help me better embrace the lack of routine in our life and find new ways to work around it.
sure am!
I am getting things ready to do this project, too. What I’ve come to realize is that I don’t need to put pressure on myself to get every little detail or give up. This isn’t an all or nothing project. I want to document what I can and try to see the blessings in the routines that we have. I know that whatever I capture from the week will be interesting and important to look back on, and will be fun to capture in the moment!
Good luck to everyone! Can’t wait to see what wonderful things come fromm this!!
Thanks for the digital tips for this project. I love Evernote. I started using it about a year ago and I have almost 4000 notes and I can access them from just about anywhere. I’m really bad about tagging stuff, but because you can search for anything, I haven’t found it a problem to find anything.
Whenever I find a layout I like or a poem or anything for scrapbooking, I put it in my scrapbooking folder in evernote. Also, I have all my pics upload automatically to Evernote so that I have them in another spot for organization.
Truth be told, as I was writing this post and pondering “the digital life”, I was thinking you would totally love this!
I am a huge fan of OneNote, which came with MS Office. I believe it’s similar to Evernote, as far as I have been able to discern from geek conversations over at LifeHackers and stuff.
I love my One Note. I have notebooks for everything: Scrapbooking layouts, tips, project ideas. I even start journaling in OneNote when I am inspired to get the story down. I can also keep my OneNote synchronized across my laptop and desktop.
I will not be playing the Week of the Life game. I am committed to keeping up my 12of12 layouts (12 pictures on the 12th of the month) so I feel that this satisfies my need to capture our everyday life.
But, whatever type of Everyday challenge you take on, the challenge is finding a way to document “this is what this day was like”. I have a collection of interesting pictures of our everyday lives as a result of my 12of12’s.
Had to laugh at the comment about the blackberry…I started today and was mowing our 6 acres with my blackberry in hand to take pictures 🙂 I make a folder on my computer just for week in life photos, I also start a word document…..with little notes….Thanks for the tips 🙂
Late comment, but I, too laughing at the Blackberry comments.. wakkakaka.. although I actually got the opposite complain that I ignore my BB most of the time.. just can’t stand the ugly quality of the camera.. AND I AM SO jealous with all the Instagram photos all over the twitter. I might will manually “Instagram-ed” my photos just to be “like everyone”. wkkakakakakaa… Love the post, Jen! Thanks for re-sharing it via twitter! *wink-wink*
Great tips! When I read about it, I wasn’t sure I was ready to fully commit, but I think I may just do it through my blog. That way I know I’m getting posts in too. 🙂
Debbie
eastshorelanedesigns.com