re-introducing myself

Hi! I looked for a waving emoticon and there wasn't one, so I'll put my favorite one instead. You might have thought my favorite is this one and I do love it, but I just find more use for it than my favorite one. Oh! There is a waving one. I missed it the first time I looked.

I have been documenting my life for longer than I can remember. Thank goodness for photos and journaling! When I was 8, it was a tiny green diary with a lock. When I was 11, I started collecting memorabilia in a store-bought plastic spiral bound book with pockets. As a teenager, whenever my Mom developed a roll of film, my sister and I would put our names on the backs of prints to ask for reprints and I started creating photo albums. I also made scrapbooks with colorful paper in three ring binders, with memorabilia and words cut out of magazines and stickers. And I was filling 3 Subject spiral notebooks with prolific journal writing; each notebook lasting just months. When I was a young teacher in the late 1990's (primary grades) and the scrapbooking industry was picking up steam, I was ready for it. I loved strolling down the aisles of Michaels.

I wish I had saved the advertisement or article that informed me of digital scrapbooking for the first time. You'd think I would have thought to do that, considering how I was already documenting my life pretty well. But all I can remember is that it was something in a scrapbooking magazine that made me aware of the fledgling idea of digital scrapbooking, a perfect way to keep my scrapbooking supplies out of reach of my babies! I also know it was 2005, because here's the first digital layout I ever made and saved.

That was in Photoshop 5 (NOT Elements) which my husband happened to already have on his computer for some reason I don't remember. Very quickly I tried a few scrapbooking programs -- Lumipix Fotofusion was a brilliant collage program but not great at much else -- and finally settled on Photoshop Elements in 2006, because that was what the majority of other people were using. I joined my first digital scrapbooking forum, Scrapgirls, in 2007. I learned a lot there and it was a great community, but by 2011 or so I was considering trying to make a scrap for hire business and they weren't scrap4hire-friendly, so I started exploring the digital scrapbooking world. For a couple of years, I got on several Creative Teams and Store Teams (ScrapMatters was the best!) but nothing came of my scrap4hire plans.

I got the photographer bug (from a photography class at Scrapgirls, believe it or not). I bought a Canon Rebel T1i in 2010 and by 2012 I was studying photography seriously, with classes at Clickinmoms (now Click Community) and CreativeLIVE. My children were big kids and my favorite subjects. I began to consider going into business and took business classes. I got turned off to that idea by 2016, but 2016 was my first perfect Project 365 (as in truly not missing a day) after 7 years of doing that project in one way or another.

As my favorite photography subjects got closer to adulthood, they began refusing to be photographed. And then I went back to work and life got harder for various reasons. I think I took my last DSLR photo in 2021. I brought the camera with me on my cross country road trip and used it at the Grand Canyon. It was really grand, and deserved it!

Now my children are all done homeschooling and embarking on their independent lives (aged 23, 20, and 18). I spend my days during the school year working with children as a paraeducator. I was hired in 2021 with pandemic funds, however, which ran out last year, so, because I wanted to stay at the same school, I accepted a position in special ed for this year. It has been a very hard year, and I'm hoping to go back to a general ed para position next year, even though it probably means leaving the school I will have worked at for 4 years. Which is hard, because there are people, adults and children, at this school who I have gotten to know, and I especially will miss continuing to watch the children grow up.

The new administration about to start on January 20 is threatening us too -- my husband's job and my kids' human rights -- so that's stressing us out.

So I'm so glad TLP is starting the year strong! I love this place. I had mostly stopped scrapping at the height of my photography study and in 2015 I became determined to get back into it. I resolved to scrap every Saturday, at least one page, and I tried out a few places, including TLP. I'm sorry to say The Digital Press won me over TLP for most of 2015 (I have no idea why now) but that explains the date under my profile image, when I didn't actually post in the gallery until December 2015 and become active here until MOC 2016. But I've been committed to this place ever since, never having any desire to go anywhere else. Some other places had some of the good things that are here, but this has truly been the best online forum I've ever been in (and I'm including the Mothering.com forums where I spent a lot of time in the early '00's and the several photography forums where I've been a member and any other forums, like Adobe, which never answers my questions!).

Whew! See, I do love to journal. No worries if nobody reads it. I will be copying and pasting it into my Day One Journal.
(Day One counts 976 words. I feel like I should have written at least 24 more.)