A NEW CHALLENGE

I've been thinking a lot about the coming year.  

I've been thinking about where I want to focus my time and attention.  I've been thinking about what areas of my life are already humming and which ones need a bit of a tune-up.  I've been thinking about the things that make me feel energized and plotting ways to get more of them into my life.

One thing I keep coming back to is the need for a new creative outlet and a new creative challenge.  Or, perhaps, both of those things rolled up into one new project.  

I well remember the hours that I poured into Project Life in 2012.  It was new to me and kept my brain creatively challenged even during the hours that I wasn't actively working on my album.  I hungrily studied the work of others - anxious to see how they composed their pages, what journaling they included, how they managed to make their albums cohesive and so on.  The layouts took a lot of time, too, as I endeavored to make them both pretty and purposeful. 

In 2013, I had the system down - the journaling and the photo printing - but I was anxious to work on the aesthetic side of my album.  Again, especially those first few months, I spent a lot of time figuring out ways to put my own aesthetic spin on the project.  

This year, I finally found my documenting voice.  I have this project down.  Not just the systems of it, but also the style.  I know what I like.  I know how to make a page that I like without taking hours upon hours to get it done.  I love my albums and I love the time that I spend putting them together.  

But.  

The challenge is gone.

I've beat it.

What does that mean?  It means that I'm ready to tackle something new.  

I'm so excited to be back in the beginning stages of a creative pursuit.  It's the "new love" phase, where everything is a possibility and I devour any and every little tidbit of information that might help me figure this thing out.

This beginning phase is always frustrating (which I'm sure I'll have more to write about in the coming months) because there are too many unknowns.  But each irk and each error add up to an understanding and a level of expertise.  

I am excited for this specific project, but I am also just feeling good - in a content kind of way - with the idea of being back to the beginning of something.

PS: This does not mean that I am done with Project Life.  Project Life is an important and permanent part of my life.  It is simply being delegated to an "I got that" role in the little world of my creative endeavors.