Why I Scrapbook!
I am teaching online again.
This means I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do and why I am still doing it. I few weeks ago, on my drive home from Seattle I decided I wanted to come up with an acronym that could help me explain my why—and I did. I’m excited to share it will you in today’s episode.
C - A - P - T - U - R - E
For me the practice of memory keeping is about creativity and anticipation. It’s about being present and telling stories and understanding ourselves and others better. It’s about remembering. I scrapbook to create evidence of the life I am living and I believe I actually enjoy my life more because I scrapbook.
I started this episode with an audio clip from the 1978 Heinz Ketcup TV commercial set to the music and lyrics of Carly Simon’s hit, Anticipation. Scrapbooking is ketchup for life. Pausing to take pictures and then choosing to live with those pictures—to pair a few of them with your thoughts and feelings—doing this often enough that even on the busy days, you recognize moments of “just rightness.”
Memory keeping is a practice that slows you down and allows you to savor life even as it speeds by.
Some additional resources:
I LOVE to share Story Starter kits with my listeners who send SpeakPipe messages.
Our brains are constantly looking for problems to solve. So, rather than allowing my brain to default to dissatisfaction, I intentionally give it creative problems to solve. I start projects so that just off the stage of my consciousness my mind is working on sorting and organizing and assembling—I’m mentally selecting colors and photos. Words are edited and design decision are made so that when I return fully focused I am productive and engaged.
Adding stories to my practice has taught me that we can edit, revise and interpret our life stories even as we are constrained by the facts of a circumstance. I’m the one who decides how to respond to plot twists and I can view new chapters and complicated characters with courage and grace. A recent study in Science magazine adds more support to the idea that engaging in stories—and I believe our own stories—the more we understand others and the more curiosity we have for their motivations, opinions and decisions.
