can we skip to the good part — bananafishstudio

My name is France and I have decision paralysis. I become easily overwhelmed by too many choices. Do I have commitment issues? Yes, yes I do. It takes me FORever to settle on a format or an approach for documenting my stories every year and the moment I do I imagine it could be better? I envy those of you that put your money on a horse and ride that baby to the finish line. Why can’t I pick a horse? Did I mention I was indecisive?

Allow me to issue a warning. This will not be terribly riveting but here you have it, a timeline if you will:

Tues evening: I pull out some of my favorite past projects and spend a good hour weeping and laughing. As if I wasn’t being melodramatic enough I began playing Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have it All.” We did. We really did. Those pre-Covid memories were intense. By Wednesday morning I was so certain that a 6x8 pocket page album was the front runner that I even told my friends. By Wednesday night I was already getting squirrelly. Thursday I was in the throes of indecision. It wasn’t pretty. By Friday I started to gain some clarity remembering the wise words of my grandfather…”it’s the purpose not the project.” He right. Sometimes those old perfectionist tendencies creep back in and I have to work to reject them. Perfectionism is rooted in Inferiority. This belief that you won’t meet expectations. That you aren’t enough just as you are. I’ve talked myself out of a lot of things over the years out of fear that it wouldn’t be perfect, that I would fail, but I’ve since done the work, I’ve got strategies and one of them is reminding myself that whatever I do will be fine. I will be fine. Failure can be opportunity, indecision can be flexibility. I can always adjust and do more or less or nothing at all. Allow the process to just unfold. Trust myself.

Look at me showing growth.

this is a mini I made in 2017 that I never finished, but I love what I did finish and want to do it again this year

So, what did I ultimately decide? I’m just gonna make a chunky minibook heavily inspired by the Details workshop I took years ago by Tina Azmus of Life Love Paper. Sadly this class is no longer available, but it was in 2015. The version created by AndreaCollects is a favorite. This, along with my daily journaling, my art journals and the various themed projects I do throughout the year will be enough and if I need to shift things…well then I’ll shift away. Right now I’m working on a Hindsight 2021 album based on the Life Captured class I took with Kari Stiles last year. I don’t think this class is still available, but the kit is and I loved it. More on that later. Until then, keep well my friends.