A few weeks ago my book group finished reading Unbroken (amazing story – highly recommend to anyone) and we were bantering around ideas for our next book.  We decided on Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in A Thousand Years, one of my favorites.  The book asks and explores the question – are we living our best life story?

As a lead-in to our new book, we got together yesterday to discuss how we all approach “telling our story” with photos.  For a few sweet hours…

* We shared where we are with managing our photos and memories and ideas for how to move forward.
* We discussed if we really need to do something with every picture we’ve ever taken vs. focusing on what we really want to remember.
* We commiserated with each other over the desire to have a place to set up a big photo organization project and just leave it out.
* We considered the importance of photographing everyday life details as well as the big events.
* We agreed that picking one small project to focus on is far superior to thinking about everything we’d like to get done someday.
* We recognized that accountability is key and we are often most successful when we have a hard deadline for a project.

It was a great morning of inspiration and encouragement.  However, many of the women expressed feelings I often hear when we talk about all of the photos, videos, memorabilia etc. that we collect throughout of our lives.  Feelings and phrases such as:

* I want to do it all, but I’m overwhelmed
* I need to get over my perfectionist tendencies
* I feel guilty that my kid’s memories are trapped in my iPhone

I’m still processing the takeaways from our time together, but I know that one of them was stated by my friend, Sabrena, on her way out the door –  “it is nice to know I’m not alone in this area of my life.”  I couldn’t agree more.

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