Scrapbooks

Scrapbooks are the haunt of the elderly. This was my impression growing up. Cutting and sticking my life down on paper seemed to be an exercise in boredom. Something that an only child with Mum and Grandparents could not abide by.

Like a spoilt king of old, entertainment was needed 24/7 and a hobby that required more than a few minutes to ponder was not on the radar.

Thankfully, Pokemon arrived at the end of the 90s to offer a level of reasoning. A sudden obsession provided by small, thin pieces of card. Collections and the keeping of them were now cool. Scrapbooking was no longer the hobby of the old, it was the revelation of the young.

Cutting and sticking my life down on thin card brought a new meaning to Primary School art. The boredom of old was replaced by the excitement of creativity.

Nothing Like It

Cutting up your life, or more importantly, shaping your life into different pieces, to be added to a scrapbook is therapeutic. Saving key elements that you want to hold on to, to help you define what is important. It works in a similar fashion to friendships.

As you get older you remove people from your life as your values no longer align. You keep some along for the whole story and the same can be said for a scrapbook. You stick down those parts that resonate most with you.

If you want to record your entire life then you buy a diary. A scrapbook forces you to consider the most important elements. You need to trim away the fat and stick down the lean, juicy memories, the ones that made you smile.

Creating a scrapbook is something that has stayed with me throughout my life. Just like the lessons that your family brings you up with, I have sometimes paid full attention and at other times I have hidden them away in my draws.

There is nothing like a scrapbook. I mean you could say that Pinterest is like an online scrapbook for images but it is not something that you can cut up. You simply grab and upload. The scrapbook requires you to choose what you keep and what you remove.

An Evolution

Whenever I head home I look at my old scrapbooks. Within these, I have numerous stickers, images taken from magazines and most importantly family snaps. The scissors came into play when it came time to make the most of the space.

Each year I purchased but one scrapbook in order to reduce costs and keep my life as succinct as possible. If you consider this to be controlling, then you are most likely not an only child. I was and so I developed my own rules at a young age.

By only buying one per year I was forced to go back through the memories of the year prior in order to trim them down to a succinct level. I did not know what the word, succinct meant during my early years of scrapbooking but I knew how much money I was earning through my pocket money.

Prune away what is not important and keep that which is.

Back in the day, I kept memories in a little box and then at the end of the year I would take out the scissors, glue and scrapbook. It is something that two decades later, I still do.

Some years, especially the teenage and university years, I must confess that I was not as productive, yet I kept the memories that were key. If I went to a gig or was exploring whilst on holiday, then I would keep the ticket. I had nowhere to add it but I kept it in my box.

Settling Down

This may be incredibly cliche to say but settling down into a long term relationship resulted in my life slowing down. I am now engaged to get married, buying a new scrapbook every year as a result. The in-between, teenage memories being collated and added to a couple of 'missing memories' scrapbooks. The important consideration here is that regardless of any pauses or hesitations that we have, lessons last a lifetime.

Settling down a few years ago has helped me return to the past. Each year I go back through all the memories recorded over the previous 12 months, trim away the ones that weren't unique or aren't very memorable and then glue those that I cannot live without.

When I am 100 years old and my memory is not what it was, I hope that these scrapbooks will help me unglue those foggy patches and cut through the grey.

Settling down is something that should be celebrated, yet without the memories, we cannot build a future worth holding on to. In a way, we remember things as we wish to and this is what Scrapbooks personify, the cutting away of what we want to forget. My family photos have no mention of my Dad as I do not wish to remember. I choose to cut him away with a pair of scissors in order to remember the good, not the bad or the ugly.

A Final Thought

Hobbies are what keep our brains going. One that I have kept with me is scrapbooking. It is something that will last a lifetime, as our memories are precious. I may not be happy with every aspect of my life but there are hundreds of memories that I wish to keep. Others can simply be trimmed away by a pair of scissors.

The humble art instrument can help us build the narrative that works best for us. A scrapbook is a hobby that we can all engage with as we are all living our lives. Some parts we may wish to prune but the hope is that we can all find a life worth sticking down.