Hello December

If you read the posts on my old blog, you'll know that I always posted daily in December.  I started doing it because I had fallen in love with the idea of doing what is called a December Daily scrapbook.  The scrapbook was a concept developed by Ali Edwards and has taken on a life of its own in the many years since.  The original purpose was to find a fairly simple way of documenting holiday traditions and memories in December.  Over time, though, I have found that it became a significant creative challenge too.  In fact, maybe too much so, given everything else that is going on in December.  While I enjoyed doing the scrapbooks for several years, last year I realized I just didn't have the heart for it anymore.  I barely even started that scrapbook despite finishing all the previous years' albums.  And last year, I found that despite my best efforts to relax and enjoy the season, I had several instances where I had what could only be described as an adult temper tantrum because of the extreme stress I was feeling from the holiday.

There is this quote that I found that I have been trying to take to heart: "May you have the courage to break the patterns in your life that are no longer serving you."  I used that quote in an art journal layout late last year, but I don't know that I truly started thinking about what it meant until well into this year.

I have been taking the time to really reflect on what is important to me, and I found that sometimes (maybe even a lot of the time), I have conflicting desires.  I simultaneously want to do a bunch of stuff that I enjoy and makes me happy and I want to take time to breathe and relax and feel my life.  A lot of the time, those desires are simply incompatible and I end up choosing to do all the things.  That leads me into a cycle of stress and anger and frustration, which means I end up not enjoying the things anyway.  

So this December, I am diligently applying myself to having the courage to break the patterns in my life that are no longer serving me.  I'm taking a hard look at all the things that I think I want to do and letting go of some of them to make room for me to experience my life in real time, instead of rushing through it.  (This is a goal I've had for several years, and I'm pretty sure I probably posted something similar last year.  But what I realized is that I wasn't actually letting go of anything.  I was just trying to do all the things and feel less stressed at the same time.  That was completely ineffective.  I needed to actually give up not just one thing or two things, but probably a whole bunch of things, and it was going to be kind of painful to give them up, which is why I didn't do it before.)  

One of the things I'm letting go of is the December Daily scrapbook.  That doesn't mean that I won't be documenting holiday traditions, but I'm not going to stress about getting a picture and a story for every day.  It means that I'm going to live each day as it happens and not try to create a holiday tradition or memory every single day, especially if there wouldn't normally be one.  And I will eventually incorporate the pictures and stories that do happen into a scrapbook, but it will be digital and it will be more like a photo album, so it won't take all the time and creative energy that it used to take.  Plus, I still have last year's scrapbook to work on if I feel like I want to do some holiday scrapbooking.  And I can always pick up the process again in the future if I decide I miss it.

Because I'm letting go of the December Daily scrapbook, that freed me up to do some December/Christmas things before December, which I did.  (Normally, I felt like I had to save all the Christmas-related stuff for December so that I could have a picture and a story of it for the scrapbook.)  Not as many as I probably should have, but I came to my conclusion about what I was going to do for December a bit late, so there was only so much I could do ahead of time.  But I'll hopefully be better placed for next year to do even more before Christmas, which should help reduce the frantic holiday activity that always seems to ruin the month I most want to experience.

And finally, I'm letting go of posting every day for my blog.  I wrestled with exactly what I would do for quite a while and it wasn't until just this morning (about an hour ago, in fact), that I committed to a course of action.  I had originally been planning on doing three posts a week.  One on Monday with a Donut focus, one on Thursday that was sort of a catch-up post or not Donut-centric, and one on Saturday with a summary of the week's holiday activities.  But I realized as I was putting together ideas for posts and doing some preliminary writing that I just wouldn't be able to stick to that schedule without stressing about it.  So, I decided to take the Thursday posts out.  I'll still do a Donut post on Mondays. And I plan to do the post on Saturdays with a summary of the week's holiday activities.  But the catch-up posts will have to wait until some point in the future.  I guess I've got all the time in the world, really.  I'll write them when I can write them and not worry about it.

So I'll see you back here on Saturday, when I'll share what we've been up to this week.  (Hint: It will definitely involve shopping for a Christmas tree!)