Weekend Away

Karen organised another amazing retreat - her 7th Wave Rock Scrapbooking Retreat - 5 of which I have been a part of which is truly a privilege. Thank you Karen for running a very professional outfit and always looking to make things better each time. I always have a great time with lots of laughs and come away knowing that my classes were well received and hopefully I have passed on a little inspiration.

I did not remove my camera from my bag all weekend! I'm amazed - and after thinking about this on the way home I made some decisions that I will come to later in this post. So there are no photos - not one - nada - zip - zero.....sorry.

Congratulations to Annica who won the beautiful Raffle prize much to the amazement of her sister Lis who picked out all the numbers for her. We also had the pleasure of Morganne's (Lis' 10 month old daughter) company on the weekend and she was just amazing - sooo good and even slept straight through Lis' first class - what a sweetheart.

It was a long drive home but sometimes driving on your own your mind starts to wander and you think about life, the universe and everything. On a personal note our year has had its ups and downs (like most people) and without going into too much detail, "the balance" is all out of wack at the moment and some re-adjustment is definitely needed. It's so easy to just keep plodding along in the same rut and the next thing you know another year has passed you by. I was asked a lot of questions over the weekend - some to do with scrapbooking, some to do with my photography and some personal. One which has stuck with me is "....because you scrap for other people has it taken the enjoyment out of scrapping for yourself?" The reason I Scrapbook is no longer the original reason I started Scrapbooking. Does that make sense? I was honest “The enjoyment for me has gone” – the enjoyment has been passed onto the recipient of one of my albums or class member. Looking around the hall on the weekend I was inspired by those I teach to go back to Scrapbooking and recording stories on pages and in images because I want to not because I have to.

So some changes are afoot. Exactly what yet I’m not sure. I haven’t worked that bit out yet. Some of my projects have certainly reached, if not surpassed my expectations and some have not even made it out of the starting gates. So it’s time to re-assess what it is that I enjoy and really want to do, without rewards, except for myself.

One thing that will have a rest for a while is my blog – I need to get off this computer, it has started to take over in so many ways. So I won’t have disappeared altogether, I’ll still be here but won’t be posting for a while. My website may also get a rest (in fact it has in recent weeks by default), I need to reclaim some other parts of my life and spend time with my family – the girls only have a few years left at school and will be off doing their own thing soon enough and emotionally I'm not ready for that one.

Of course I will see out all of my commitments for the rest of the year and who knows normal programming may resume sometime in the future!!!!