This & That: The Gift of Personal and Family History

No, don't just scroll on past....really.

First off, happy birthday to my daughter-in-law, Sarah! Have a great day!

Yes, this is a subject about which I feel very passionate. In fact, I wish I could teach some kind of class about it so I could take the time to go through all the whys and wherefores, and what's working so well for me right now. Honestly, I hope my family sees this as a gift. I hope generations down the line, that my posterity will see it as a way to really know me. I'm so grateful for the technology that makes documenting my and my family so easy. I'm also grateful for creative people who come up with ways to add to a daily run-down, and force me to dig just a little deeper.

I'm continuing to follow the weekly Instagram prompts from @mymodernstory. This is another branch of Project Life that is making me think of things to include in a "Thoughts and Insights" binder. This prompt was about someone who inspired us.

This one seemed to really hit home for me, and that was to document something I don't know right now.

As I made my way through the Stuff I Know posts, I got thinking about my blog in general, how maybe it won't exist on the internet forever, and how there are some ready-made pages in the posts there, so I've started the very laborious process of going through those posts and picking out those that might translate to this process easily.

It's going to be a labor of love since there are over 4,000 posts to go through. Little bit by little bit, though. The nice thing about these posts, though, is that they tend to be shorter than the SIK encyclopedias, so it's not quite the editing challenge to fit the commentary into the allotted space for journaling. It's also a way for me to include information that happened when I had some of my kids at home and I was less than diligent about keeping a journal.

I'm making progress on the Stuff I Know posts. I only have about a half dozen more to go. This will be an opposite page to the one below.

It's been fun to go through them again.

Sometimes I will go through the effort of finding the original pictures that went with the post.

Sometimes I just find something that won't detract from the words. At least I hope so.

This one is another 2-pager.

Apparently I was just really feeling it that day.

None of these pictures were in the original post, but you make it work when you have to.

That brings me to the last couple of week's worth of Project Life pages.

Real life lives here, and my kids share it with me so I can document it.

I really love this process. I love that I'm catching different aspects through different processes. I love that aside from the editorial/blog pages, I can do it all in 5 minutes a day, with an extra 10 minutes on Sunday to put the Project Life pages together.

You don't have to do things my way, but if I could make one gentle suggestion, it would be to take 5 minutes at the end of the day and just give a summary about what happened. You don't have to add feelings or decorate it. Just download a journal app and take the 5 minutes for the people in your posterity who are like me, and want to know what you did all day and how you made it happen. 5 minutes....really. Give them that gift.