Document the Little Stuff when the Big-Picture Gets Overwhelming
Documenting your life is difficult. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar -- straight up. Taking on the responsibility of telling your story can be super stressful at times.
Some people might have a natural talent for it, and we all get better with practice -- but it's not an easy thing. Every choice that you make as a documentor -- what to document, who to document, how to document it -- all say things about who you are as a person right now.
During the hard times -- it can be easier to focus on the little picture -- the little details that make up the everyday fabric of our lives. We can leave out the heavy stuff and really just focus on the surface stuff that take up the bulk of our time.
For me -- documenting these things made it easier to remember to take things one day at a time, it made me remember that a lot of my details are totally the same as everyone else, even if I feel like I'm a little bit lost right now.
Document the little picture when the big picture gets overwhelming.
My experience -- In January, we found out that Jeff got accepted into a PhD program at Michigan State, and that barring any crazy changes, we would be relocating there over the summer. Then the waiting began -- waiting to see the area, waiting to find a new home, waiting to get going on all of the stuff we had to do. In the midst of all that waiting came the anxiety -- the anxiety about moving halfway across the country, the anxiety about living 10+ hours from any family/friends, the anxiety of knowing you have a million things to do, but not being able to start doing anything about them.
While I was in this weird anxious limbo place, my motivation to document my life dropped drastically. I didn't want to talk about what I was feeling, I didn't feel like trying to tackle these (really stressful, but temporary) problems in a creative way. I slacked on my Currently Lists, my Project Life, and the rest of the 'big-picture' stuff.
I still wanted to do something -- because making stuff with paper always makes me happy, even if I'm not documenting the totality of my life. So I just started playing around and came up with a few projects while I was in my documenting rut:
Lady Journal
Buzzfeed Quizzes
Awesome Ladies Project
30 Lists
My Details
All these projects have one thing in common -- they are small-picture projects. They are a view of me through a very specific lens.