Losing Steam

Weather: 28 degrees, 55 today
Mood: Surly
Listening to: the voices in my head

If anyone has seen my scrapping mojo, could you send it back my way?

I haven't been able to scrap anything lately. I have plenty of photographs and kits. I have enough scrap kits on my hard drive to scrap for years without duplicating anything. So why can't I get a page or two together?

It's gotten bad lately. I'm almost to the point of using quick pages so I can just plop the pictures in, do a little journaling, and be done with it. I haven't even done Halloween pictures yet!

I think part of my problem is that I'm a social scrapper. I like to share my layouts with others and get ideas from them about what I can put on my pages. And lately the community has gotten away from that. Now people share their layouts in a more competitive way and I'm just not into competition, especially in my hobby. Hobbies are supposed to be stress reducing, right?

When I first started scrapping in 2003 there weren't any big message boards or sites devoted to it. I thought I was the only one scrapping with my computer. Then I discovered a couple of groups on Yahoo and joined the mailing lists. We chatted via email and posted our layouts. We got tips from scrappers who were awesome and friendly about sharing how they put their layouts together. It was a bunch of friends (well, maybe a few hundred friends) getting together and talking about something they enjoyed.

Then the big sites started, with designers making supplies for us. First they shared them, then they started selling them. The hobby became a business and digital scrapping became something that we could all do. We didn't have to be designers because there were cool chicas out there like Maya and Ronna Penner and Michelle Underwood and Shabby Princess who could make stuff for us. And we were like kids in the candy store and our layouts were beautiful and joyous and we shared and lifted each other up.

I could scrap for myself and for my family and I felt like I was part of a community of women who did the same.

Then came the Creative Teams (CTs) and things changed. I enjoyed being on the CTs. I absolutely adore Kim Hill and Kathy Moore and Susan Bartolini to this day. I think I was lucky to be on three great teams because I had a great experience with it and never felt like I was scrapping with supplies I didn't like or were substandard. And I never felt like I had to be all over the boards hawking their wares and pumping their egos.

However, the designers and CTs have changed the hobby. Now when I go to the message board, I feel like it's a huge marketing tool. Instead of sitting around talking about techniques, we talk about product. And instead of a bunch of us talking about product, we are being sold product.  Because of this, I think the boards have become very competitive and it's not a very uplifting or positive place anymore.

And I think this is one reason why my mojo is missing in action. Without my "friends" to encourage me and inspire me, I'm kind of adrift within this hobby.

More later...

Comments

[HaleyW]

Totally relate - this is exactly where I am right now, and it is miserable. Hopefully we'll find our way out of this rut and back into the love of this hobby. Thanks for the post.

[DebiH]

I totally agree, Maya. The community is what started it all. I think I am kind of talking about how much I miss that sense of community in my scrapping. I would never think of taking that away. But maybe some changes would make it better.

A couple of things that I would like to see are:

1. Doing away with the contests because it's so hard to objectively judge them and to make them feel less like popularity contests, which tend to be rather divisive.

2. Taking out the Praise Games and Gallery Standout threads from the forums. If someone wants to praise layouts, they know where to find them.

3. Making a NSBR thread for Non ScrapBook Related subjects on the forums so the non-scrapping controversies can stay out of the main boards.

I'm not talking solely about DST, but that is the big centralized site so it could affect the most change.

Evolve is a good word, Maya. The leaders of this business need to pave the way for this evolution.

[Maya]

You make lots of points that I relate to and understand. Things definitely change as they grow and evolve and sometimes we make the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Our sense of community is what this business was built from.