Friday, July 17, 2009

Breaking Out of Procrastination

For exactly two years now, I have needed and wanted to create a photo book from our trip to Africa. We went in July 2007. Right after that I got pregnant and I had 10, almost 11, child-free months to do this. And yet, I procrastinated. And then, even after Ethan came, I had several months where he slept peacefully for 9/10 of the day. And still, I procrasinated. Why? I think there were two main reasons for my procrastination:

1. The main thing was that the task seemed a little overwhelming to me. I took almost 800 pictures just with my camera and I wanted to use several more that my parents took with their two cameras. Not that I planned on using every single one, but that's a lot of pictures to sort through.

2. And...I wanted this book to be perfect. That's a dangerous word, but here's my reasoning behind it (besides the fact that I am a perfectionist, ok?). This was a huge trip for Casey, me, and my family. Huge. It was two weeks...to Africa...and pretty much the trip of a lifetime. How are you supposed to document a trip like that in an appropriate manner? I knew I didn't just want to get prints and slap them together in an album. And I didn't want to just use the ho-hum templates and terribly blah fonts that most photo book services offered...although they were just fine for other our trips and pictures. But not this one.

But here is what broke me out of my procrastination. It happened so suddenly and the book was completed in one long weekend (Friday through Sunday). I decided that I'd much rather work on the Africa photo book than peel wallpaper from the bathroom. That was my big motivator. Avoiding something else. But if there's something to avoid in life, it is definitely taking down wallpaper...an activity that I said I would never do again. I've got to be more careful with those absolute statements.

Anyway...the photo book is not only completed, it's here. And it is pretty much everything I wanted it to be, thanks to Blurb and the new BookSmart software they have. Their templates are fully customizable now, and they allow you to use the fonts installed on your computer; those two things are all I needed. If I've learned something here, it is that I need to find something I dread more than the thing I need to do and then it will get done.

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4 comments:

Heather said...

I am so impressed with all of your creations! If I give you all my pictures, will you do one for me? :)

Brianna Kay said...

I'm not sure I will ever be happy with my amateur scrapbooking ever again after seeing your amazing projects -- I'm going to have to look into this Digital Scrapbooking thing. :-) Hope you are well and blessed, you little man is so handsome!

~Bri

Christina said...

Wow! It's beautiful! I'll have to do this on our trip of a lifetime... just have to take the trip first - haha!

Mary said...

I can't wait to look through it with all your journaling!