How to create a more meaningful Yearbook as 2018 approaches…
“My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses!”
Isabel Allende, Mother & Novelist
Making a Yearbook? It’s decision time…
Half of the year passed, so time to start making your Yearbook. But, when you get down to making your Yearbook this year, what items are you going to choose to keep? Which will you agonize over? And which will you choose to delete?
Create That Tapestry of Your Life
As a Facebook user, I sometimes see myself as a tourist – constantly collecting little souvenirs of my everyday life: pictures, memes, bric-and-bric of trivia that either made us giggle, made a social point or raised an eyebrow.
All the things I uploaded and shared are meaningful, forming another thread in the tapestry of my life. The photos of the kids…the cool pics you took at birthday parties, the Cake Bake, school play, summer vacation, and more. Not to forget those artsy pictures that tickle your childish fascination. And, of course, all the likes, comments, and statuses that provided a running commentary to all these moments!
Yes, thankfully our lives are incredibly rich with experiences – which makes choosing which memories to preserve so tough!
So….It’s time to Spring Clean your Memories this Summer!
Even though My Social Book can run to 100’s of pages, still I know that my Yearbook cannot include everything! In creating this year’s My Social Book I will need to make choices, I cannot keep hold of the sum total of all these years mementos.
To use a metaphor, just like when I do my Spring clean, I know I will both love and hate this process! Each dear item I peruse will trigger some delicious sensory memory and I’ll find it hard to dis-attach myself and press the ‘edit’ button.
Which Memories to Keep for Your Album?
Oh! “To keep or not to keep” this is the Yearbook question! Here’s how I went about creating my choice – I made 2 piles…
“Definitely Keep!”
- The pics where I look fantastic I’ll keep! (Because I always want to remember how fantastic I looked, too!)
- All the adorable pictures of the kids
- Best friends birthdays
- Romantic (and not-so-romantic) pics with my hubbie
- Holiday snaps in Greece
“Maybe Keep?”
- My crisis at work
- My yoga instructor getting ill with cancer
- Those crazy elections
- Our cat going AWOL
But, here’s the question…should I really edit out of my “maybe” memories? As if they never happened?
The fact is: our ups and our downs make up the picture of our complete life.
What I love about My Social Book is that it lets us include all the stuff of an authentic, lived life: what we’ve gone through, what we’ve experienced & how friends experienced this together with us! In other words, the highs and the lows.
So, my advice: this year when you create your yearbook, make sure to include some of the “downs” as well as some of the ups. Your complete self will thank you.
You can check the online preview of your own yearbook for free on this link.
