If you had to do it all over again...

What would you change?

I'm talking scrapbooking related, but heck, everyone has different things that earn priority seating in their lives.

There are a lot of things that I would've done differently:

1. I would've avoided the online communities when I went searching for scrapbooking inspiration. I didn't start to doubt myself until I logged onto the .net for inspiration (I was a lone scrapper, so I had nobody to scrap with and no place to go to advance my skill set). CONSEQUENCE: I wouldn't have met my 2 best-est friends, Dorkfish and Chick'n Louver and that would've been really bad because they have been a stabilizing force in my scrappy life...mind you, neither of them are any more stable than I am...but it's nice to have company every once and while.

2. I would've forced myself to engage in scrapbooking at the many scrapping stores in my city.
I'm not a big people person (my cynical nature, for some, is hard to swallow), but I think that forcing myself to acclimate to the 'real scrapper' environment would've served as a much better support force than the faceless online communities. Yes, I would've had to bring ear plugs and aspirin, but eventually I would've grown numb and been able to overlook the hen house chatter.

3. I would've remembered that my creative spirit needs no justification other than my own. I loved my pages when I started scrapping. Every stinkin' last one. It wasn't until I started perusing the online arena that I began to view my creations with a critical eye. I judged myself because of a criteria for design set by people who don't know enough about me to dictate how I "should" scrap.

4. I would've left the online community (had I still been stupid enough to join it) as soon as I experienced my first creative block. That block lasted 3-4 months long. I was afraid that I wasn't good "enough", but never asked myself what I was trying to be good "enough" FOR! I spent 4 months of my life in turmoil over not being who GOD didn't intend for me to be. How could I have thought that anything good could come out of a venue that views praise as a validation for your continued existence within it's walls?

5. I would've stuck to the basics as far as tool purchases. I would've definitely gotten a Silent Setter, simply because most of my scrapping was done after my kids went to bed, but the majority of the rest of my tools...they would've never made it to my door unless I knew without a doubt that there was true value in possessing them. I would've definitely had my testosterone levels checked frequently in order to head off any tool buying frenzy.

6. I would've stayed away from Design Teams Calls, Contests, and anything else that inspired competition instead of unity. Seeing the favoritism and unethical practices did little more than further solidify my insecurity about my artistic ability. Why anyone thought that bringing interpersonal competition into the memory preservation crafting arena was sadistic and/or money hungry. Scrapbooking is about individual celebration of life...who, other than you-know-who, has any business passing judgement on that?

7. I would've only bought what I needed for a certain project. The fruits of my bulk buying has only proven to be an albatross...3 years later. I would've been more in touch with myself and hopefully picked up on how the need for validation fed into my desire to have everything that my 'peers' said I should. All I had to do was take a peek at my hundreds of yards of fabric and thousands of pony beads to come to grips with the fact that I am a pack rat hoarder...maybe that type of in-your-face intervention would've saved me thousands of dollars and tons of space.

8. I would've beat myself with my own frying pan if the thought of following trends had entered my mind. Trends are another person/persons interpretation of what is "in". Scrapbooking is about memory preservation...it doesn't really need to follow any trend scale because...well, your memories aren't trend based. I prided myself on being an independent, free thinker and yet I knowingly drank the Kool-aid...and asked for seconds. If I could do it all over again, I would've found a doctor that was willing to perform a voluntary frontal lobe lobotomy before I allowed myself to run off the cliff like many lemmings before me.

9. I would never have purchased a strap hinge album. I can think of a lot of things that I could do that would be far more entertaining than trying to remember how to reassemble my scrapbooking album. Taking an alcohol bath in a shallow tub full of scissors and cleaning my ears with Drano top my list of 'better things to do".

10. I would've remained true to myself. I would've learned to ask myself if "I liked my layout" instead of focusing on how it would be received. I almost lost my desire to tell the story because of my misguided focus on the layout design...I will never allow that to happen. Trust me, my family would quickly get tired of "getting" that I "cherished" my kids, husband, pets, garden vegetables and camera.

11. I wouldn't have bought photo editing software. I didn't need it for the first 8 months of scrapping. In fact, I didn't need it until it was suggested to me that I get it in order to broaden the possibilities of layout design. I have painfully neat hand writing, I'm not tooting my own horn, but I didn't need a computer to journal and I would've ordered reprints instead of fooling around with the color management on my computer.

12. I would've never bought a large format printer. Yes, I HAD to get it in order to give myself the ability to print directly on my card stock...but I've done that all of 3 times...so why did I blow that $300? Oh yeah, I didn't have any frying pans handy and lobotomies are considered illegal where I live.

13. I would've made scrapbooking a hobby to share with my kids. Instead of spending so much time scrapping alone and desiring moments of lone scrapping, I would've taken advantage of the memory making opportunity that sharing one's love of scrapping can afford. There is nothing that curves your spending that watching your hard earned dollars go up in flames when your kids get ahold of it.

14. I would've never even introduced the use of acrylic paints into my scrapping sphere. I have over 60 bottles of paints...70% of them have never seen action...and never will. The good thing is that I've dabbled in painting, so I may eventually use them. The bad thing is, that I'm now lying to myself... again...and most of my paints will probably wind up on Ebay before the weeks complete.

15. I would've searched out objective product reviews before buying. I don't mean the reviews/advertisements that inundate CK, MM and the other popular magazines. I mean real reviews. The reviews that would've told m that Heidi Swapps rubons were schizophrenic, that the die and notch tools were optimistic wastes of money that would've been better allocated for payment for the aforementioned frontal lobe lobotomy, and that the odds of getting your money's worth out of those huge boxes of zig markers were slightly less than the odds of my getting smacked in the forehead by an airborne leprechaun who'd been catapulted from the land of Liliputia (that's Gulliver's favorite island if you don't know what I'm talking about). I would've been more aware of people trying to blow sunshine up my poop chute and taken evasive action accordingly.
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I find it funny that many of my biggest regrets stem from allowing myself to get involved int eh faceless machine that online scrapbooking has become. I can honestly say that wouldn't want to give up the online arena, again, because of my 2 sister/friends, but I would definitely keep my eyes open and my backside guarded. I am sure that there are a lot of things that I would strive to do over, but these are the ones that strike me as most important...at the moment.